Kim Astor Währborg: Gaze Following in Infancy: Mechanisms and Developmental Context

Abstract

Few things are as fundamental to humans as the ability to share attention. It allows us to coordinate our actions with, and assimilate knowledge from, the actions of others with remarkable efficiency and accuracy. This ability emerges in infancy and sets the stage for all subsequent social development. In this thesis, I explore how infants align visual attention with others toward external objects, a skill known as gaze following. The included studies investigate this phenomenon at different levels, ranging from processes within the infant (Study I) to the impact of infants’ immediate emotional context at a micro-scale (Study II) and cultural variation at a macro scale (Study III).

Previous work has suggested different mechanistic explanations for emerging gaze following, ranging from perceptual cueing to reinforcement learning, to social motivation. Study I aimed to conduct a critical test comparing the perceptual cueing perspective with the social-first perspective. The results indicate that infants initially use both cues, but rely more on social information towards the end of the first year. 

The theories of gaze following emergence can be framed in a broader discussion regarding the developmental base (experience-dependent or experience-expectant). It has been suggested that infants’ environment influences the early development of gaze following. However, some theoretical perspectives hold an experience-expectant perspective that infants are predisposed to align visual attention with others, suggesting that gaze following should be relatively robust early in life. In Study II, we found that infants’ gaze following was impacted by attachment quality and maternal Postpartum depression (PPD) at 6 and 10 months, respectively, aligning with an experience-dependent view of development. 

Study III extends this work to test the universality of Study II and gaze following as a valid measure of attention sharing. We found that across different cultural contexts (Bhutanese and Swedish), infants follow gaze to a similar degree. However, the impact of infants’ social and emotional environment observed in Study II was not found in Bhutan. We discuss the possibility that cultures relying more on interdependent values possess inherent protective factors that mitigate the negative effects of PPD on the infant.