Meng Xianwei, Uto Yusuke, Hashiya Kazuhide
Graduate School of Human-Environment Studies, Kyushu UniversityFukuoka, Japan; Japan Society for the Promotion of ScienceTokyo, Japan.
Graduate School of Human-Environment Studies, Kyushu University Fukuoka, Japan.
Front Psychol. 2017 Jan 18;7:2065. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2016.02065. eCollection 2016.
Not only responding to direct social actions toward themselves, infants also pay attention to relevant information from third-party interactions. However, it is unclear whether and how infants recognize the structure of these interactions. The current study aimed to investigate how infants' observation of third-party attentional relationships influence their subsequent gaze following. Nine-month-old, 1-year-old, and 1.5-year-old infants ( = 72, 37 girls) observed video clips in which a female actor gazed at one of two toys after she and her partner either silently faced each other (face-to-face condition) or looked in opposite directions (back-to-back condition). An eye tracker was used to record the infants' looking behavior (e.g., looking time, looking frequency). The analyses revealed that younger infants followed the actor's gaze toward the target object in both conditions, but this was not the case for the 1.5-year-old infants in the back-to-back condition. Furthermore, we found that infants' gaze following could be negatively predicted by their expectation of the partner's response to the actor's head turn (i.e., they shift their gaze toward the partner immediately after they realize that the actor's head will turn). These findings suggested that the sensitivity to the difference in knowledge and attentional states in the second year of human life could be extended to third-party interactions, even without any direct involvement in the situation. Additionally, a spontaneous concern with the epistemic gap between self and other, as well as between others, develops by this age. These processes might be considered part of the fundamental basis for human communication.
婴儿不仅会对针对自身的直接社交行为做出反应，还会关注来自第三方互动的相关信息。然而，目前尚不清楚婴儿是否以及如何识别这些互动的结构。本研究旨在探究婴儿对第三方注意力关系的观察如何影响他们随后的视线追随。9个月大、1岁和1.5岁的婴儿（N = 72，37名女孩）观看视频片段，片段中一名女性演员在她和她的搭档要么默默面对面（面对面条件）要么看向相反方向（背对背条件）之后注视着两个玩具中的一个。使用眼动仪记录婴儿的注视行为（例如，注视时间、注视频率）。分析结果显示，年龄较小的婴儿在两种条件下都会追随演员看向目标物体的视线，但1.5岁的婴儿在背对背条件下并非如此。此外，我们发现婴儿的视线追随可以通过他们对搭档对演员转头的反应的预期来进行负向预测（即，他们在意识到演员的头会转动后立即将视线转向搭档）。这些发现表明，在人类生命第二年对知识和注意力状态差异的敏感性可以扩展到第三方互动中，即使没有直接参与该情境。此外，在这个年龄，一种对自我与他人以及他人之间认知差距的自发关注也会发展起来。这些过程可能被视为人类交流基本基础的一部分。
