From birth, human and nonhuman primates attend more to faces with direct gaze compared with averted gaze, and previous studies report that attention to the eyes is linked to the emergence of later social skills. Here, we explored whether early experiences influence attraction to eye contact in infant macaques by examining their attention to face pairs varying in their gaze direction across the first 13 weeks of life. Infants raised by human caretakers had limited conspecific interactions (nursery‐reared;
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10358821
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Frontiers in Psychology
- Volume:
- 13
- ISSN:
- 1664-1078
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Abstract N = 16) and were compared to infants raised in rich social environments (mother‐reared;N = 20). Both groups looked longer to faces and the eyes of direct compared to averted‐gaze faces. Looking to all faces and eyes also increased with age. Nursery‐reared infants did not display age‐associated increases in attention to direct‐gaze faces specifically, suggesting that, while there may be an initial preference for direct‐gaze faces from birth, social experiences may support its early development. -
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Abstract Humans detect faces efficiently from a young age. Face detection is critical for infants to identify and learn from relevant social stimuli in their environments. Faces with eye contact are an especially salient stimulus, and attention to the eyes in infancy is linked to the emergence of later sociality. Despite the importance of both of these early social skills—attending to faces and attending to the eyes—surprisingly little is known about how they interact. We used eye tracking to explore whether eye contact influences infants' face detection. Longitudinally, we examined 2‐, 4‐, and 6‐month‐olds' (
N = 65) visual scanning of complex image arrays with human and animal faces varying in eye contact and head orientation. Across all ages, infants displayed superior detection of faces with eye contact; however, this effect varied as a function of species and head orientation. Infants were more attentive to human than animal faces and were more sensitive to eye and head orientation for human faces compared to animal faces. Unexpectedly, human faces with both averted heads and eyes received the most attention. This pattern may reflect the early emergence of gaze following—the ability to look where another individual looks—which begins to develop around this age. Infants may be especially interested in averted gaze faces, providing early scaffolding for joint attention. This study represents the first investigation to document infants' attention patterns to faces systematically varying in their attentional states. Together, these findings suggest that infants develop early, specialized functional conspecific face detection. -
Eye gaze is an important source of information for animals, implicated in communication, cooperation, hunting and antipredator behaviour. Gaze perception and its cognitive underpinnings are much studied in primates, but the specific features that are used to estimate gaze can be difficult to isolate behaviourally. We photographed 13 laboratory-housed tufted capuchin monkeys ( Sapajus [Cebus] apella ) to quantify chromatic and achromatic contrasts between their iris, pupil, sclera and skin. We used colour vision models to quantify the degree to which capuchin eye gaze is discriminable to capuchins, their predators and their prey. We found that capuchins, regardless of their colour vision phenotype, as well as their predators, were capable of effectively discriminating capuchin gaze across ecologically relevant distances. Their prey, in contrast, were not capable of discriminating capuchin gaze, even under relatively ideal conditions. These results suggest that specific features of primate eyes can influence gaze perception, both within and across species.more » « less
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Young children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) look less toward faces compared to their non‐ASD peers, limiting access to social learning. Currently, no technologies directly target these core social attention difficulties. This study examines the feasibility of automated gaze modification training for improving attention to faces in 3‐year‐olds with ASD. Using free‐viewing data from typically developing (TD) controls (
n = 41), we implemented gaze‐contingent adaptive cueing to redirect children with ASD toward normative looking patterns during viewing of videos of an actress. Children with ASD were randomly assigned to either (a) an adaptive Cue condition (Cue,n = 16) or (b) a No‐Cue condition (No‐Cue,n = 19). Performance was examined at baseline, during training, and post‐training, and contrasted with TD controls (n = 23). Proportion of time looking at the screen (%Screen) and at actresses' faces (%Face) was analyzed. At Pre‐Training, Cue and No‐Cue groups did not differ in %Face (P > 0.1). At Post‐Training, the Cue group had higher %Face than the No‐Cue group (P = 0.015). In the No‐Cue group %Face decreased Pre‐ to Post‐Training; no decline was observed in the Cue group. These results suggest gaze‐contingent training effectively mitigated decreases of attention toward the face of onscreen social characters in ASD. Additionally, larger training effects were observed in children with lower nonverbal ability, suggesting a gaze‐contingent approach may be particularly relevant for children with greater cognitive impairment. This work represents development toward new social attention therapeutic systems that could augment current behavioral interventions.Autism Res 2020, 13: 61–73Lay Summary In this study, we leverage a new technology that combines eye tracking and automatic computer programs to help very young children with ASD look at social information in a more prototypical way. In a randomized controlled trial, we show that the use of this technology prevents the diminishing attention toward social information normally seen in children with ASD over the course of a single experimental session. This work represents development toward new social attention therapeutic systems that could augment current behavioral interventions.
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Abstract Comparative approaches to experimental economics have shed light on the evolution of social decision‐making across a range of primate species, including humans. Here we replicate our previous work looking at six pairs of capuchin monkeys' (
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.977771
