Development of Attention to Faces during the First 3 Years: Influences of Stimulus Type

Libertus, Klaus; Landa, Rebecca; Haworth, Joshua

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01976

Cited by 27 publications

(25 citation statements)

References 36 publications

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“…Over succeeding months, infants continue to look preferentially at faces, but shift their attention to different parts of the face (or person) depending on the context (Frank et al 2011;Libertus et al 2017). Young infants preferentially orient towards eyes, while older infants look towards mouths during speech and hands during manual actions (Boyer et al 2020;Frank et al 2011).…”

Section: Behavioral Evidencementioning

confidence: 99%

Learning in Infancy Is Active, Endogenously Motivated, and Depends on the Prefrontal Cortices

Raz

Saxe

2020

Annu. Rev. Dev. Psychol.

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A common view of learning in infancy emphasizes the role of incidental sensory experiences from which increasingly abstract statistical regularities are extracted. In this view, infant brains initially support basic sensory and motor functions, followed by maturation of higher-level association cortex. Here, we critique this view and posit that, by contrast and more like adults, infants are active, endogenously motivated learners who structure their own learning through flexible selection of attentional targets and active interventions on their environment. We further argue that the infant brain, and particularly the prefrontal cortex (PFC), is well equipped to support these learning behaviors. We review recent progress in characterizing the function of the infant PFC, which suggests that, as in adults, the PFC is functionally specialized and highly connected. Together, we present an integrative account of infant minds and brains, in which the infant PFC represents multiple intrinsic motivations, which are leveraged for active learning. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Developmental Psychology, Volume 2 is December 15, 2020. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.

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Section: Behavioral Evidencementioning

confidence: 99%

Learning in Infancy Is Active, Endogenously Motivated, and Depends on the Prefrontal Cortices

Raz

Saxe

2020

Annu. Rev. Dev. Psychol.

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“…For example, studies presenting one video at a time report that human and NHP infants prefer to look at videos compared to photos (Livingstone et al., 2017; Ryan et al., 2019) and are more attentive when videos depict social stimuli compared to nonsocial stimuli (Frank, Vul, & Johnson, 2009; Frank, Amso, & Johnson, 2014). While most studies report that human infants generally seem to display high and sometimes increasing levels of social attention to dynamic stimuli across the first months of life (Frank et al., 2009, 2014; Hunnius & Geuze, 2004), others report that attention to dynamic social information initially declines, sometimes over the first few months (Sifre et al., 2018), the first 6 months (Courage, Reynolds, & Richards, 2006), or the first year (Libertus, Landa, & Haworth, 2017) of life, and then subsequently increases. It is theorized that attention to social stimuli may not only vary based on age, but also based on the stimuli used (e.g., static vs. dynamic; multiple stimuli competing for attention; Libertus, Landa, & Haworth, 2017).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…While most studies report that human infants generally seem to display high and sometimes increasing levels of social attention to dynamic stimuli across the first months of life (Frank et al., 2009, 2014; Hunnius & Geuze, 2004), others report that attention to dynamic social information initially declines, sometimes over the first few months (Sifre et al., 2018), the first 6 months (Courage, Reynolds, & Richards, 2006), or the first year (Libertus, Landa, & Haworth, 2017) of life, and then subsequently increases. It is theorized that attention to social stimuli may not only vary based on age, but also based on the stimuli used (e.g., static vs. dynamic; multiple stimuli competing for attention; Libertus, Landa, & Haworth, 2017). However, only a few studies in humans have directly compared infants’ attention to concurrent social and nonsocial dynamic videos, and most have been with older children (Pierce, Conant, Hazin, Stoner, & Desmond, 2011; Pierce et al, 2016).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Human and monkey infant attention to dynamic social and nonsocial stimuli

Maylott

Paukner

Ahn

et al. 2020

Developmental Psychobiology

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The present study explored behavioral norms for infant social attention in typically developing human and nonhuman primate infants. We examined the normative development of attention to dynamic social and nonsocial stimuli longitudinally in macaques (Macaca mulatta) at 1, 3, and 5 months of age (N = 75) and humans at 2, 4, 6, 8, and 13 months of age (N = 69) using eye tracking. All infants viewed concurrently played silent videos—one social video and one nonsocial video. Both macaque and human infants were faster to look to the social than the nonsocial stimulus, and both species grew faster to orient to the social stimulus with age. Further, macaque infants’ social attention increased linearly from 1 to 5 months. In contrast, human infants displayed a nonlinear pattern of social interest, with initially greater attention to the social stimulus, followed by a period of greater interest in the nonsocial stimulus, and then a rise in social interest from 6 to 13 months. Overall, human infants looked longer than macaque infants, suggesting humans have more sustained attention in the first year of life. These findings highlight potential species similarities and differences, and reflect a first step in establishing baseline patterns of early social attention development.

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“…We tested 139 participants aged 8-22, divided into four age groups based on age and pubertal status: children (age [8][9][10][11], early adolescents (age [12][13][14], adolescents (age [15][16][17] and young adults (age [18][19][20][21][22]. They performed a mixed pro-and anti-saccades task, where the target stimulus was either a face, a car or a noise pattern, all equalized for low-level properties.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Inhibiting saccades to a social stimulus: a developmental study

Geringswald

Afyouni

Noblet

et al. 2020

Sci Rep

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inhibiting saccades to a social stimulus: a developmental study f. Geringswald, A. Afyouni, c. noblet & M.-H. Grosbras * faces are an important source of social signal throughout the lifespan. in adults, they have a prioritized access to the orienting system. Here we investigate when this effect emerges during development. We tested 139 children, early adolescents, adolescents and adults in a mixed pro-and anti-saccades task with faces, cars or noise patterns as visual targets. We observed an improvement in performance until about 15 years of age, replicating studies that used only meaningless stimuli as targets. Also, as previously reported, we observed that adults made more direction errors to faces than abstract patterns and cars. The children showed this effect too with regards to noise patterns but it was not specific since performance for cars and faces did not differ. The adolescents, in contrast, made more errors for faces than for cars but as many errors for noise patterns and faces. in all groups latencies for pro-saccades were faster towards faces. We discuss these findings with regards to the development of executive control in childhood and adolescence and the influence of social stimuli at different ages. Faces are amongst the most salient visual stimuli that we encounter daily. They convey information paramount for social interactions, such as identity, internal state and intentions. A large corpus of research has demonstrated that faces are processed by specifically tuned mechanisms in the primates' visual system 1-4. In addition, faces attract and retain attention faster and more strongly than other objects: independently of low-level visual saliency, even in complex scenes, we look at faces preferentially and more quickly than other objects 5-7 or animal faces 6,8,9. We can detect faces more efficiently 10-12 , while is it difficult to ignore them, even if this is detrimental to the task 5,13-15. When this prioritized processing emerges in ontogeny and how it develops is unclear. We know that from very early on infants like to look at faces and spend a considerable amount of time doing so 16-19. The dominant theories propose that this precocious bias for face-like stimuli, coupled with the intrinsic incentive values of faces, would shape the visual and the orienting systems towards becoming increasingly attuned to faces 20. In accordance, like adults, children and adolescents tend to fixate more faces than other objects when looking at complex visual scenes 21-23. Yet we also know that many aspects of face processing, such as identity or facial expression recognition, are not fully mature in terms of accuracy and speed, until at least mid-adolescence 24-28 , and that the specialization of brain circuits for faces emerges gradually 29-35. Some of these findings also suggest a non-linear development with a plateau 36 , or even a dip 37 in performance at the beginning of adolescence, followed by later additional improvement. This has been interpreted as a consequence of a re-organisation of the fac...

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Development of Attention to Faces during the First 3 Years: Influences of Stimulus Type

Cited by 27 publications

References 36 publications

Learning in Infancy Is Active, Endogenously Motivated, and Depends on the Prefrontal Cortices

Learning in Infancy Is Active, Endogenously Motivated, and Depends on the Prefrontal Cortices

Human and monkey infant attention to dynamic social and nonsocial stimuli

Inhibiting saccades to a social stimulus: a developmental study

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