ERIC Number: EJ850504
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2004-Feb
Pages: 9
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1363-755X
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Available Date: N/A
12- and 18-Month-Old Infants Follow Gaze to Spaces behind Barriers
Moll, Henrike; Tomasello, Michael
Developmental Science, v7 n1 pF1-F9 Feb 2004
Infants follow the gaze direction of others from the middle of the first year of life. In attempting to determine how infants understand the looking behavior of adults, a number of recent studies have blocked the adult's line of sight in some way (e.g. with a blindfold or with a barrier). In contrast, in the current studies an adult looked behind a barrier which blocked the child's line of sight. Using two different control conditions and several different barrier types, 12- and 18-month-old infants locomoted a short distance in order to gain the proper viewing angle to follow an experimenter's gaze to locations behind barriers. These results demonstrate that, contra Butterworth, even 12-month-old infants can follow gaze to locations outside of their current field of view. They also add to growing evidence that 12-month-olds have some understanding of the looking behaviors of others as an act of seeing.
Descriptors: Infants, Eye Movements, Age Differences, Toddlers, Child Development, Developmental Stages, Adults, Barriers, Visual Stimuli, Comparative Analysis, Object Permanence
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Evaluative
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
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