Farroni Teresa, Csibra Gergely, Simion Francesca, Johnson Mark H
Centre for Brain and Cognitive Development, School of Psychology, Birkbeck College, University of London, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HX, United Kingdom.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2002 Jul 9;99(14):9602-5. doi: 10.1073/pnas.152159999. Epub 2002 Jun 24.
Making eye contact is the most powerful mode of establishing a communicative link between humans. During their first year of life, infants learn rapidly that the looking behaviors of others conveys significant information. Two experiments were carried out to demonstrate special sensitivity to direct eye contact from birth. The first experiment tested the ability of 2- to 5-day-old newborns to discriminate between direct and averted gaze. In the second experiment, we measured 4-month-old infants' brain electric activity to assess neural processing of faces when accompanied by direct (as opposed to averted) eye gaze. The results show that, from birth, human infants prefer to look at faces that engage them in mutual gaze and that, from an early age, healthy babies show enhanced neural processing of direct gaze. The exceptionally early sensitivity to mutual gaze demonstrated in these studies is arguably the major foundation for the later development of social skills.
眼神交流是人类建立沟通联系最有力的方式。在生命的第一年，婴儿迅速了解到他人的注视行为传达着重要信息。进行了两项实验以证明从出生起对直接眼神交流的特殊敏感性。第一个实验测试了2至5天大的新生儿区分直接注视和回避注视的能力。在第二个实验中，我们测量了4个月大婴儿在伴有直接（而非回避）眼神注视时对面部的脑电活动，以评估对面部的神经处理。结果表明，人类婴儿从出生起就更喜欢注视与他们进行相互注视的面孔，并且从很小的时候起，健康的婴儿对直接注视表现出更强的神经处理能力。这些研究中所证明的对相互注视异常早期的敏感性，可以说是社交技能后期发展的主要基础。
