Collicott Cherie, Collins Stephanie, Moore Chris
Department of Psychology Dalhousie University.
Infancy. 2009 May 6;14(3):363-376. doi: 10.1080/15250000902839344. Epub 2009 May 1.
Infants follow the gaze of an individual with whom they are directly interacting by the end of the first year. By 18 months infants are capable of learning novel words in observational (or third-party) contexts (Floor & Akhtar, 2006). To examine third-party gaze following in 12- and 18-month-olds, the parent and experimenter engaged in a conversation while the infant was present. For 8 trials approximately every 30 sec the experimenter would turn her head to the right or left to fixate on a toy placed on either side of the room with the parent following suit. In the first experiment, the parent was seated next to the infant and the experimenter opposite, whereas in the second experiment the positions of the adults were switched. In Experiment 1, 18-month-olds but not 12-month-olds followed gaze. In Experiment 2, 12-month-olds acquired a tendency to follow gaze during the experimental session. These results suggest that an incipient ability to follow third-party gaze is present by 12 months and that infants acquire a more reliable and general ability to follow the gaze of noninteractive others between 12 and 18 months.
婴儿在一岁末就能跟随与他们直接互动的人的目光。到18个月大时，婴儿能够在观察（或第三方）情境中学习新单词（弗洛尔和阿赫塔尔，2006年）。为了研究12个月和18个月大婴儿对第三方目光的跟随情况，当婴儿在场时，家长和实验者进行了对话。在大约每30秒进行的8次试验中，实验者会将头转向右侧或左侧，注视放在房间两侧的一个玩具，家长也照做。在第一个实验中，家长坐在婴儿旁边，实验者坐在对面，而在第二个实验中，两位成年人的位置互换。在实验1中，18个月大的婴儿会跟随目光，但12个月大的婴儿不会。在实验2中，12个月大的婴儿在实验过程中逐渐养成了跟随目光的倾向。这些结果表明，12个月大时就存在初步的跟随第三方目光的能力，并且婴儿在12个月至18个月之间获得了更可靠、更普遍的跟随非互动他人目光的能力。
