Okumura Yuko, Kanakogi Yasuhiro, Kobayashi Tessei, Itakura Shoji
NTT Communication Science Laboratories, Kyoto, Japan.
Graduate School of Letters, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan.
Cognition. 2017 Sep;166:418-424. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2017.06.005. Epub 2017 Jun 16.
Gaze-following behaviors play an important role in language development. However, the way in which gaze-following contributes to language development remains unclear. By focusing on two abilities, namely following the gaze direction of others and processing a cued object, the present study investigated how these two influences work together to promote language development in a longitudinal approach on infants from 9 to 18months of age. The results demonstrated that infants who spent more time following the gaze direction toward an object were more efficient in processing the cued object at 9months and had larger vocabularies by 18months. Mediation analyses showed that the relationship between early gaze-following behavior and subsequent vocabulary size was explained by object-processing ability. Importantly, mere extended fixations on a target object without the initiation of another's gaze shift were not related to enhanced object-processing. Our findings suggest that following another's gaze shift toward the object has an impact on object-processing that could contribute to vocabulary development, elucidating a critical step in the path from early gaze-following ability to later language development.
视线追随行为在语言发展中起着重要作用。然而，视线追随对语言发展的贡献方式仍不明确。本研究聚焦于两种能力，即追随他人的视线方向和处理被提示的物体，采用纵向研究方法，调查了这两种影响如何共同作用，促进9至18个月大婴儿的语言发展。结果表明，在9个月大时，花费更多时间追随指向物体的视线方向的婴儿，在处理被提示物体方面效率更高，到18个月大时词汇量更大。中介分析表明，早期视线追随行为与后续词汇量之间的关系可由物体处理能力来解释。重要的是，仅仅长时间注视目标物体而没有引发他人视线转移，与增强的物体处理能力无关。我们的研究结果表明，追随他人看向物体的视线转移对物体处理有影响，这可能有助于词汇发展，阐明了从早期视线追随能力到后期语言发展过程中的关键一步。
