Influence of Eye Gaze on Spoken Word Processing: An ERP Study With Infants

• Autores: Eugenio Parise, Andrea Handl, Letizia Palumbo, Angela D. Friederici
• Localización: Child development, ISSN 0009-3920, Vol. 82, Nº. 3, 2011, págs. 842-853
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • Eye gaze is an important communicative signal, both as mutual eye contact and as referential gaze to objects. To examine whether attention to speech versus nonspeech stimuli in 4- to 5-month-olds (n = 15) varies as a function of eye gaze, event-related brain potentials were used. Faces with mutual or averted gaze were presented in combination with forward- or backward-spoken words. Infants rapidly processed gaze and spoken words in combination. A late Slow Wave suggests an interaction of the 2 factors, separating backward-spoken word + direct gaze from all other conditions. An additional experiment (n = 15) extended the results to referential gaze. The current findings suggest that interactions between visual and auditory cues are present early in infancy.