Infant neural sensitivity to eye gaze depends on early experience of gaze communication
Open accessAbstract
A fundamental question in functional brain development is how the brain acquires specialised processing optimised for its individual environment. The current study is the first to demonstrate that distinct experience of eye gaze communication, due to the visual impairment of a parent, affects the specificity of brain responses to dynamic gaze shifts in infants. Event-related potentials (ERPs) from 6 to 10 months old sighted infants with blind parents (SIBP group) and control infants with sighted parents (CTRL group) were recorded while they observed a face with gaze shifting Toward or Away from them. Unlike the CTRL group, ERPs of the SIBP group did not differentiate between the two directions of gaze shift. Thus, selective brain responses to perceived gaze shifts in infants may depend on their eye gaze communication experience with the primary caregiver. This finding highlights the critical role of early communicative experience in the emerging functional specialisation of the human brain.
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Early communicative experiences play a critical role in development of attention to others' verbal and non-verbal social communication cues.
“Moreover, there is a critical role of early communicative experiences in the development of individuals’ attention towards other people’s verbal and non-verbal social communication cues (Vernetti et al., 2018).”
From Innovations of the ICD-11 in the Field of Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Psychological Approach (2022) · cites this paper as Vernetti et al., 2018
The Discussion concludes that reduced early experience of non-verbal eye-gaze communication affects infants’ neural processing of gaze. The study does not establish an effect on attention to verbal cues, and its measured outcome was a neural response to gaze shifts rather than attention to social cues generally. (LLM, conf=0.88)
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- Authors
- Vernetti, A., Ganea, N., Tucker, L., Charman, T., Johnson, M. H., & Senju, A.
- Affiliations
- Birkbeck, University of London (GB)
- King's College London (GB)
- University of Cambridge (GB)
- Corresponding author
- Senju, Atsushi
- Venue
- Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2018-11
- Volume
- 34
- Pages
- 1-6
- ISSN
- 1878-9293 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC6252267
- OpenAlex
- W2803356897
- Cited by
- 24
- References
- 33
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1 · 2024: 2 · 2023: 3 · 2022: 4 · 2021: 2 · 2020: 6 · 2019: 5 · 2018: 1
- FWCI
- 2.08
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Update notices
- erratum (2020-10-01)
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- BIROn (Birkbeck, University of London) (acceptedVersion)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- Research Portal (King's College London) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Apollo (University of Cambridge) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Apollo (cc-by)
- Funders
- UK Medical Research Council Career Development Award (G1100252)
- UK Economic and Social Research Council Research Fellowship (RES-063-27-0207)
- Wellcome Trust/Birkbeck Institutional Strategic Support Fund
- UK Medical Research Council Programme Grant (G0701484, MR/K021389/1)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Face Recognition and Perception
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Child and Animal Learning Development
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Action Observation and Synchronization
- Keywords
- gaze communication, blind parents, gaze shifts, face perception, event-related potentials, caregiver-infant interaction, infant brain development
- MeSH terms
- Communication, Evoked Potentials, Eye Movements, Female, Fixation, Ocular, Humans, Infant, Male
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