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Comparative Study
. 2021 Jan;26(1):4-38.
doi: 10.1111/infa.12360. Epub 2020 Dec 11.

The development of gaze following in monolingual and bilingual infants: A multi-laboratory study

Krista Byers-Heinlein  1 , Rachel Ka-Ying Tsui  1 , Daan van Renswoude  2 , Alexis K Black  3 , Rachel Barr  4 , Anna Brown  5 , Marc Colomer  6 , Samantha Durrant  5 , Anja Gampe  7 , Nayeli Gonzalez-Gomez  8 , Jessica F Hay  9 , Mikołaj Hernik  10 , Marianna Jartó  11 , Ágnes Melinda Kovács  12 , Alexandra Laoun-Rubenstein  1 , Casey Lew-Williams  13 , Ulf Liszkowski  11 , Liquan Liu  14 , Claire Noble  5 , Christine E Potter  13 , Joscelin Rocha-Hidalgo  4 , Nuria Sebastian-Galles  6 , Melanie Soderstrom  15 , Ingmar Visser  2 , Connor Waddell  14 , Stephanie Wermelinger  7 , Leher Singh  16
Affiliations
Comparative Study

The development of gaze following in monolingual and bilingual infants: A multi-laboratory study

Krista Byers-Heinlein et al. Infancy. 2021 Jan.

Abstract

Determining the meanings of words requires language learners to attend to what other people say. However, it behooves a young language learner to simultaneously encode relevant non-verbal cues, for example, by following the direction of their eye gaze. Sensitivity to cues such as eye gaze might be particularly important for bilingual infants, as they encounter less consistency between words and objects than monolingual infants, and do not always have access to the same word-learning heuristics (e.g., mutual exclusivity). In a preregistered study, we tested the hypothesis that bilingual experience would lead to a more pronounced ability to follow another's gaze. We used a gaze-following paradigm developed by Senju and Csibra (Current Biology, 18, 2008, 668) to test a total of 93 6- to 9-month-old and 229 12- to 15-month-old monolingual and bilingual infants, in 11 laboratories located in 8 countries. Monolingual and bilingual infants showed similar gaze-following abilities, and both groups showed age-related improvements in speed, accuracy, frequency, and duration of fixations to congruent objects. Unexpectedly, bilinguals tended to make more frequent fixations to on-screen objects, whether or not they were cued by the actor. These results suggest that gaze sensitivity is a fundamental aspect of development that is robust to variation in language exposure.

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Conflict of interest statement

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare that there were no conflicts of interest with respect to the authorship or the publication of this article.

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Screenshot of one of the videos presented to infants showing the three areas of interest (AOIs) used: face, congruent object, and incongruent object.
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
Forest plot for the cross-lab meta-analysis on the proportion of first look. Error bars show 95% confidence intervals.
Figure 3.
Figure 3.
Forest plot for the cross-lab meta-analysis on frequency of looks. Error bars show 95% confidence intervals.
Figure 4.
Figure 4.
Forest plot for the cross-lab meta-analysis on duration of looks. Error bars show 95% confidence intervals.
Figure 5.
Figure 5.
Forest plot for the cross-lab meta-analysis on latency. Error bars show 95% confidence intervals.
Figure 6.
Figure 6.
The logistic regression model predicting the probability of making first look to the congruent object, plotted with individual participants’ probabilities.
Figure 7.
Figure 7.
The linear regression model predicting the frequency of shift towards the AOI, with error bars showing 95% confidence interval.
Figure 8.
Figure 8.
The linear regression model predicting duration of fixations towards the AOI, with error bars showing 95% confidence interval.
Figure 9.
Figure 9.
The linear regression model predicting latency of fixations towards the AOI, with error bars showing 95% confidence interval.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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