Gaze orienting in the social world: An exploration of the role played by caregiving vocal and tactile behaviors in infants with visual impairment and in sighted controls

This database includes the raw data linked with the paper “Gaze orienting in the social world: An exploration of the role played by caregiving vocal and tactile behaviors in infants with visual impairment and in sighted controls”, published on Brain Sciences Journal, doi: 10.5281/zenodo.11121406. In this paper we report on data on the association between maternal vocal and tactile behaviors and the gaze orientation of visually impaired (VI) infants compared to sighted controls (SI).

Procedures

45 infants (24 VI and 21 SI) and their mothers participated in a videorecorded 6-minute observational procedure including the well-acknowledged Face-to-Face Still-Face (FFSF) paradigm. For the purposes of this study, only the play and still episodes were analyzed. Videos were micro-analytically coded (in 2 seconds bins) for infant’s gaze orientation (unfocused GO, object GO or mother GO) and for mother’s vocal production (socio-cognitive or nurturing vocalizations) and touch behavior (pragmatic or nurturing touch).

Analytical plan

Correlation statistics (Spearman's rho) were used to test the associations between maternal behaviors and infants' gaze orientation in the play episode for the two groups. Two separate analyses of variance (ANOVA) were performed to compare the gaze orientation of the two groups during the play and still episodes. Two separate analyses of variance (ANOVA) were performed to compare the gaze orientation among three groups of children with different vision levels (severe, moderate, and sighted) during the play and still episodes.

Findings in brief

Maternal vocalizations and touch were found to influence infants' gaze orientation differently in VI infants compared SI. In particular, for VI infants no specific caregiving behaviors emerged as associated with the social orienting of attention. The group comparisons during the play episode showed that controls were predominantly oriented to the mothers, while VI infants were less socially oriented. No differences between the two groups in GO emerged during the still face episode. The visual impairment severity did not emerge as linked with social attention.