Infants perceiving and acting on the eyes: Tests of an evolutionary hypothesis

被引:128
作者
Farroni, T
Mansfield, EM
Lai, C
Johnson, MH
机构
[1] Univ London, Ctr Brain & Cognit Dev, Sch Psychol, Birkbeck Coll, London, England
[2] Univ Padua, Dipartimento Psicol Sviluppo & Socializzaz, I-35131 Padua, Italy
[3] Univ Roma La Sapienza, Dipartimento Psicol, I-00185 Rome, Italy
基金
英国医学研究理事会;
关键词
eye gaze; mutual gaze; attention; infants; modularity; domain-specific;
D O I
10.1016/S0022-0965(03)00022-5
中图分类号
B844 [发展心理学(人类心理学)];
学科分类号
040202 ;
摘要
It has been hypothesized that an evolutionarily ancient mechanism underlies the ability of human infants to detect and act upon the direction of eye gaze of another human face. However, the evidence from behavioral studies with infants is also consistent with a more domain-general system responsive to the lateral motion of stimuli regardless of whether or not eyes are involved. To address this issue three experiments with 4-month-old infants are reported that utilize a standard face-cueing paradigm. In the first experiment an inverted face was used to investigate whether the motion of the pupils elicits the cueing effect regardless of the surrounding face context. In the second experiment pupil motion and eye gaze direction were opposed, allowing us to assess their relative importance. In a third experiment, a more complex gaze shift sequence allowed us to analyse the importance of beginning with a period of mutual gaze. Overall, the results were consistent with the importance of the perceived direction of motion of pupils. However, to be effective in cueing spatial locations this motion needs to be preceded by a period of direct mutual gaze (eye contact). We suggest that evolution results in information-processing biases that shape and constrain the outcome of individual development to eventually result in adult adaptive specializations. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science (USA). All rights reserved.
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页码:199 / 212
页数:14
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