Graduate School of Letters, Kyoto University, Yoshida Honmachi, Sakyo-ku, Kyoto, 606-8501, Japan.
Faculty of Human Development, University of Toyama, 3190 Gofuku, Toyama, 930-8555, Japan.
Sci Rep. 2019 Jul 17;9(1):10352. doi: 10.1038/s41598-019-46650-6.
The unique morphology of human eyes enables gaze communication at various ranges of interpersonal distance. Although gaze communication contributes to infants' social development, little is known about how infant-parent distance affects infants' visual experience in daily gaze communication. The present study conducted longitudinal observations of infant-parent face-to-face interactions in the home environment as 5 infants aged from 10 to 15.5 months. Using head-mounted eye trackers worn by parents, we evaluated infants' daily visual experience of 3138 eye contact scenes recorded from the infants' second-person perspective. The results of a hierarchical Bayesian statistical analysis suggest that certain levels of interpersonal distance afforded smooth interaction with eye contact. Eye contacts were not likely to be exchanged when the infant and parent were too close or too far apart. The number of continuing eye contacts showed an inverse U-shaped pattern with interpersonal distance, regardless of whether the eye contact was initiated by the infant or the parent. However, the interpersonal distance was larger when the infant initiated the eye contact than when the parent initiated it, suggesting that interpersonal distance affects the infant's and parent's social look differently. Overall, the present study indicates that interpersonal distance modulates infant-parent gaze communication.
人类眼睛独特的形态使目光能够在各种人际距离范围内进行交流。虽然目光交流有助于婴儿的社会发展，但对于婴儿与父母的距离如何影响婴儿在日常目光交流中的视觉体验，我们知之甚少。本研究对 5 名 10 至 15.5 个月大的婴儿在家庭环境中的母婴面对面互动进行了纵向观察。我们使用父母佩戴的头戴式眼动追踪器，评估了从婴儿第二人称视角记录的 3138 个目光接触场景中婴儿的日常视觉体验。分层贝叶斯统计分析的结果表明，在一定的人际距离范围内，目光接触可以实现流畅的互动。当婴儿和父母靠得太近或太远时，他们不太可能进行目光接触。无论目光接触是由婴儿还是父母发起的，连续的目光接触次数都呈现出与人际距离的倒 U 型关系。然而，当婴儿发起目光接触时，人际距离比父母发起时更大，这表明人际距离对婴儿和父母的社交注视有不同的影响。总的来说，本研究表明人际距离调节了母婴之间的目光交流。
