The power of human gaze on infant learning

• We compared the effect of human and nonhuman (robot) gaze on object learning.
• Twelve-month-old infants followed the gaze direction of both the human and robot.
• Only human gaze had an influence on object processing and object preferences.
• An extended fixation on a target object did not produce learning effects.
• Our study shows that humanness together with gaze is crucial for infant learning.

Social learning enables infants to acquire information, especially through communication. However, it is unknown whether humans are the prime source of information for infant learning. Here we report that humans have a powerful influence on infants’ object learning compared with nonhuman agents (robots). Twelve-month-old infants were shown videos in which a human or a robot gazed at an object. The results demonstrated that the infants followed the gaze direction of both agents, but only human gaze facilitated their object learning: Infants showed enhanced processing of, and preferences for, the target object gazed at by the human but not by the robot. Importantly, an extended fixation on a target object without the orientation of human gaze did not produce these effects. Together, these findings show the importance of humanness in the gazer, suggesting that infants may be predisposed to treat humans as privileged sources of information for learning.