See and be seen: Infant-caregiver social looking during locomotor free play

Face-to-face interaction between infants and their caregivers is a mainstay of developmental research. However, common paradigms for studying infant-caregiver interaction oversimplify the act of social looking by placing infants and caregivers in stationary positions facing each other. In more naturalistic settings, infants and caregivers must coordinate movements of their bodies and heads to look at each another amid the demands of other ongoing actions. We hypothesized that social looking for each member of the dyad would be affected by 1) the motor costs of looking and 2) competition between the social partner’s face and other visual targets. To test these hypotheses, twelve-month-old infants and their parents wore head-mounted eye trackers to provide a moment-by-moment measure of whether each member of the dyad looked at the other’s face or looked at toys. Findings revealed that motor costs did affect looking: Social looking varied according to the body posture of infants and caregivers. Transitions between postures changed the likelihood of face looking by altering the observer’s viewpoint and the availability of the social partner’s face. Moreover, the presence of other visual targets greatly impacted infants’ but not caregivers’ social looking: Infants rarely looked at their parents’ faces but often looked at toys. In contrast, parents frequently looked at both infants’ faces and toys.

婴儿与其照料者之间的面对面互动是发展心理学研究的核心内容。然而，研究婴儿-照料者互动的常用范式通过将二者置于面对面的固定位置，过度简化了社会性注视行为。在更自然的场景中，婴儿与照料者需在其他持续进行的动作需求中协调身体与头部的运动，以实现相互注视。我们假设，对偶（dyad）中每个成员的社会性注视会受到以下两种因素的影响：1）注视的运动成本；2）社交伙伴的面部与其他视觉目标之间的竞争。为验证上述假设，12月龄婴儿及其父母佩戴头戴式眼动仪，以逐时记录对偶中双方是否注视对方面部或玩具。研究结果表明，运动成本确实会影响注视行为：社会性注视的频率随婴儿与照料者的身体姿势而变化。姿势转换通过改变观察者的视角及社交伙伴面部的可见性，影响了面部注视的可能性。此外，其他视觉目标的存在对婴儿的社会性注视产生显著影响，但对照料者无此效应：婴儿极少注视父母的面部，却常看向玩具。相比之下，父母则频繁注视婴儿的面部与玩具。