Gaze following in 4.5‐ and 6‐month‐old infants: The impact of proximity on standard gaze following performance tests

Astor, Kim; Gredebäck, Gustaf

doi:10.1111/infa.12261

Cited by 13 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 42 publications

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“…Using optical flow, learning the correct gaze direction was superior for tapping, followed by pointing with movement and, last, pointing without movement. These results underpin the hypothesis that deictic comprehension in infants is facilitated by moving gestures [1,18].…”

Section: Related Worksupporting

confidence: 56%

Solving visual object ambiguities when pointing: an unsupervised learning approach

Jirak

Biertimpel

Kerzel

et al. 2020

Neural Comput & Applic

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Whenever we are addressing a specific object or refer to a certain spatial location, we are using referential or deictic gestures usually accompanied by some verbal description. Particularly, pointing gestures are necessary to dissolve ambiguities in a scene and they are of crucial importance when verbal communication may fail due to environmental conditions or when two persons simply do not speak the same language. With the currently increasing advances of humanoid robots and their future integration in domestic domains, the development of gesture interfaces complementing human–robot interaction scenarios is of substantial interest. The implementation of an intuitive gesture scenario is still challenging because both the pointing intention and the corresponding object have to be correctly recognized in real time. The demand increases when considering pointing gestures in a cluttered environment, as is the case in households. Also, humans perform pointing in many different ways and those variations have to be captured. Research in this field often proposes a set of geometrical computations which do not scale well with the number of gestures and objects and use specific markers or a predefined set of pointing directions. In this paper, we propose an unsupervised learning approach to model the distribution of pointing gestures using a growing-when-required (GWR) network. We introduce an interaction scenario with a humanoid robot and define the so-called ambiguity classes. Our implementation for the hand and object detection is independent of any markers or skeleton models; thus, it can be easily reproduced. Our evaluation comparing a baseline computer vision approach with our GWR model shows that the pointing-object association is well learned even in cases of ambiguities resulting from close object proximity.

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Section: Related Worksupporting

confidence: 56%

Solving visual object ambiguities when pointing: an unsupervised learning approach

Jirak

Biertimpel

Kerzel

et al. 2020

Neural Comput & Applic

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“…The second interpretation would take on the experiential account and argue that preference for the human gaze is due to the inexperience that infants have with the gaze of other species or entities, like robots. Several studies have shown that gaze following develops within 12 months 33 , 40 – 45 , although the debate is still open on the exact onset period 5 , 7 , 9 , 24 , 31 , 46 , 47 . At this age, infants appear to be selectively attuned to follow the human gaze, and this would be in line with findings showing that 12-month old infants have difficulties in following the gaze of other species 39 .…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The understanding of congruent and incongruent referential gaze in 17-month-old infants: an eye-tracking study comparing human and robot

Manzi

Ishikawa

Dio

et al. 2020

Sci Rep

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Several studies have shown that the human gaze, but not the robot gaze, has significant effects on infant social cognition and facilitate social engagement. The present study investigates early understanding of the referential nature of gaze by comparing—through the eye-tracking technique—infants’ response to human and robot’s gaze. Data were acquired on thirty-two 17-month-old infants, watching four video clips, where either a human or a humanoid robot performed an action on a target. The agent’s gaze was either turned to the target (congruent) or opposite to it (incongruent). The results generally showed that, independent of the agent, the infants attended longer at the face area compared to the hand and target. Additionally, the effect of referential gaze on infants’ attention to the target was greater when infants watched the human compared to the robot’s action. These results suggest the presence, in infants, of two distinct levels of gaze-following mechanisms: one recognizing the other as a potential interactive partner, the second recognizing partner's agency. In this study, infants recognized the robot as a potential interactive partner, whereas ascribed agency more readily to the human, thus suggesting that the process of generalizability of gazing behaviour to non-humans is not immediate.

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“…One interpretation is that this pattern may reflect the early emergence of gaze following (i.e., the ability to look where another individual is looking). Gaze following begins to develop as early as 2 to 4 months of age (Astor & Gredebäck, ; D'Entremont, ; Gredebäck, Fikke, & Melinder, ; Perra & Gattis, ), and stabilizes by around 6 to 12 months (De Groote, Roeyers, & Striano, ; Morales, Mundy, & Rojas, ; Triesch, Teuscher, Deák, & Carlson, ). At first this effect may seem counter‐intuitive.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Face detection in 2‐ to 6‐month‐old infants is influenced by gaze direction and species

Simpson

Maylott

Mitsven

et al. 2019

Developmental Science

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Humans detect faces efficiently from a young age. Face detection is critical for infants to identify and learn from relevant social stimuli in their environments. Faces with eye contact are an especially salient stimulus, and attention to the eyes in infancy is linked to the emergence of later sociality. Despite the importance of both of these early social skills—attending to faces and attending to the eyes—surprisingly little is known about how they interact. We used eye tracking to explore whether eye contact influences infants' face detection. Longitudinally, we examined 2‐, 4‐, and 6‐month‐olds' (N = 65) visual scanning of complex image arrays with human and animal faces varying in eye contact and head orientation. Across all ages, infants displayed superior detection of faces with eye contact; however, this effect varied as a function of species and head orientation. Infants were more attentive to human than animal faces and were more sensitive to eye and head orientation for human faces compared to animal faces. Unexpectedly, human faces with both averted heads and eyes received the most attention. This pattern may reflect the early emergence of gaze following—the ability to look where another individual looks—which begins to develop around this age. Infants may be especially interested in averted gaze faces, providing early scaffolding for joint attention. This study represents the first investigation to document infants' attention patterns to faces systematically varying in their attentional states. Together, these findings suggest that infants develop early, specialized functional conspecific face detection.

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Gaze following in 4.5‐ and 6‐month‐old infants: The impact of proximity on standard gaze following performance tests

Cited by 13 publications

References 42 publications

Solving visual object ambiguities when pointing: an unsupervised learning approach

Solving visual object ambiguities when pointing: an unsupervised learning approach

The understanding of congruent and incongruent referential gaze in 17-month-old infants: an eye-tracking study comparing human and robot

Face detection in 2‐ to 6‐month‐old infants is influenced by gaze direction and species

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