The relationship between eye gaze, parent-child attachment and language acquisition
Date
2015-04-24Author
Francois, Jennifer R.
Advisor
Coufal, Kathy L.; Chaparro, Alex; Chaparro, Barbara S.; Parham, Douglas F.; Self, Trisha L.Metadata
Show full item recordCitation
Francois, Jennifer R. The Relationship Between Eye Gaze, Parent-Child Attachment and Language Acquisition. --In Proceedings: 11th Annual Symposium on Graduate Research and Scholarly Projects. Wichita, KS: Wichita State University, p. 14
Abstract
The process by which infants and young children acquire language is nothing short of complex
and astonishing. Environmental elements and social interactions coupled with internal, biologic
mechanisms instigate and facilitate language acquisition. Although, it seems that credit should be
equally distributed between these processes, the literature suggests the crux of the problem lies
within the infant's interactions (e.g., infant communicative attempts, such as eye-gaze), social
relationships (e.g., infant-caregiver attachment) and possible internal states (i.e., temperament).
That is to say, that these factors have a greater influence on the development of language than
predisposed genetic influences. The use of eye tracking as a way to measure and gauge infant
attention (i.e., gaze patterns) and to understand very young, prelinguistic children's acquisition of
language has gained popularity in recent years (Colombo, 2001; Farroni, Johnson, Brockbank, &
Simion, 2000; Hood, Willen, & Driver, 1998). Furthermore, eye tracking has been used to
recognize the role of mother's attachment on the child's perception of visual cues (i.e., social
cues or linguistic cues) associated with language development (Bruner, 1999; Csibra, 2010;
Murray & Yingling, 2006). The purpose of this study was to determine if differences over age
exist in infant looking behaviors between familiar and unfamiliar faces. Eye gaze behaviors of 3
month-old infants were recorded and monitored in two-week intervals over a period of one
month using the Tobii X120 eye tracker. Infants were seated in a highchair and shown black and
white images of their mother and unfamiliar people. Data collected included information on
fixation count and duration, visit count and duration, order of fixation and pupil size. Single
subject design was used, such that participants two through five served as replications of
participant one. Visual analysis of the data indicated similarities and differences between the
familiar and unfamiliar experimental conditions on each of the dependent variables across age.
For both experimental conditions, the data suggest that internal facial features (i.e., mouth, nose,
eyes) are visited more often and have more fixations that are longer in length than external facial
features (i.e., hair, shoulders, neck). For the familiar face condition, the data suggests that the
nose area of interest (AOI) is a unique area to this condition across age, such that a greater
percentage of fixations occurred within this area, as well as a greater percentage of look time
occurred at this region. In contrast, for the unfamiliar face condition, a greater total percentage of
look time occurred within and a more diverse representation of the AOI regions. This data
suggests that within this condition more scanning like behaviors occurred.
Description
Presented to the 11th Annual Symposium on Graduate Research and Scholarly Projects (GRASP) held at the Heskett Center, Wichita State University, April 24, 2015.
Research completed at Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, College of Health Professions, & Department of Psychology, Fairmount College of Liberal Arts and Sciences