Head-mounted eye tracking: A new method to describe infant looking

Despite hundreds of studies describing infants’ visual exploration of experimental stimuli, researchers know little about where infants look during everyday interactions. The current study describes the first method for studying visual behavior during natural interactions in mobile infants. Six 14-month-old infants wore a head-mounted eye-tracker that recorded gaze during free play with mothers. Results revealed that infants’ visual exploration is opportunistic and depends on the availability of information and the constraints of infants’ own bodies. Looks to mothers’ faces were rare following infant-directed utterances, but more likely if mothers were sitting at infants’ eye level. Gaze toward the destination of infants’ hand movements was common during manual actions and crawling, but looks toward obstacles during leg movements were less frequent.