Gaze following ability in children 5, 10 and 15 months old

Abstract

Joint attention is attention to an external object shared between two persons. The joint attention mechanism plays an important role in early cognitive, social and emotional development. Therefore, impairments of joint attention development can trigger different psychic disorders. The simplest form of joint attentional behavior is gaze following. The literature on the development of gaze following in children indicates that there is a great deal of variance regarding the age of emergence and development of this skill. This study aims to examine the age dynamics of the gaze following skill in infants and to establish more precisely the age at which this skill emerges. This comparative study of gaze following ability of infants at the age of 5, 10 and 15 months was conducted in Yekaterinburg at the Laboratory of the Brain and Neurocognitive Development, Ural Federal University. Gaze following ability was measured by the eye tracker task “Gaze following”. Significant differences were found between the proportion of tasks with first gaze to a congruent object performed by 5 and 10 month old children and between 10 and 15 month old children. Furthermore, there was a significant difference of fixation duration on a congruent object between 10 and 15 month old children. The results reveal that the gaze following ability emerges in children already by the age of 5 months, develops significantly by 10 months, and develops almost completely by 15 months. © E. R. VALIEVA, A. I. KOTYUSOV