| Article ID | Journal | Published Year | Pages | File Type |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5041568 | Cognition | 2017 | 7 Pages |
â¢Our study investigated how early gaze-following promotes language development.â¢We focused on two abilities: gaze-following and object-processing.â¢Object-processing mediated the relation between the cued looking duration and vocabulary size.â¢We elucidate a key step on the path from gaze-following to language development.
Gaze-following behaviors play an important role in language development. However, the way in which gaze-following contributes to language development remains unclear. By focusing on two abilities, namely following the gaze direction of others and processing a cued object, the present study investigated how these two influences work together to promote language development in a longitudinal approach on infants from 9 to 18Â months of age. The results demonstrated that infants who spent more time following the gaze direction toward an object were more efficient in processing the cued object at 9Â months and had larger vocabularies by 18Â months. Mediation analyses showed that the relationship between early gaze-following behavior and subsequent vocabulary size was explained by object-processing ability. Importantly, mere extended fixations on a target object without the initiation of another's gaze shift were not related to enhanced object-processing. Our findings suggest that following another's gaze shift toward the object has an impact on object-processing that could contribute to vocabulary development, elucidating a critical step in the path from early gaze-following ability to later language development.
