Presentation Information
[O2-04]Visual attention of infants in early interactions: Comparing early processing of music and language
*Rafael Román-Caballero1,2, Maya Psaris2, Betania Y. Georlette3, Mohammadreza Edalati3, Barbara Tillmann4, Sahar Moghimi3, Gabriel (Naiqi) Xiao2, Laurel J. Trainor2, Juan Lupiáñez1 (1. Universidad de Granada (Spain), 2. McMaster University (Canada), 3. Université de Picardie (France), 4. Université de Bourgogne (France))
Keywords:
infant-directed singing,infant-directed speech,rhythm,visual attention,eye-tracking
Given the immature cognitive development of newborns, caregivers naturally engage with them using distinctive ways of speaking and singing, with modified acoustic characteristics compared to adult-directed productions. These early interactions play a crucial role in building emotional and social connections and language development, although the core aspects of such interactions between infants and caregivers remain understudied. Recent evidence suggests that the rhythm of infant-directed (ID) songs helps guide infants’ attention to emotionally and socially relevant facial regions. In fact, infants are more likely to look at the caregiver's eyes at the time of the strong beats of the song. In the present longitudinal study, we examined the extension of this phenomenon to ID speech and ID songs in native and non-native languages with different rhythmic patterns (stress-timed vs. syllable-timed languages; e.g., English and Spanish) throughout the first year of life (at 4, 6, and 12 months of age). Eye tracking while infants watched videos of ID speaking and singing revealed that four-month-olds’ eye movements were entrained to temporal regularities in both ID songs and ID speech, in native and non-native languages. Time histograms showed that infants were more likely to look at the eyes during the beat/stressed vowels. In addition, we observed oculomotor tracking of the ID productions with time response function models. We are now examining how this rhythm tracking changes when infants are 6 and 12 months old, and how it relates to electroencephalography measures of auditory rhythm tracking. This study contributes to our understanding of the role of auditory and visual rhythmic entrainment in early language acquisition and social-affective skills.