Eye contact helps infants 'tune in' to speaker's brainwaves and learn language

Infants use eye contact with speakers to synchronize their brainwaves and selectively learn language, according to a study by scientists at the University of Cambridge and Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. The researchers found that when infants could see the speaker's eyes, their brainwaves were more likely to be in sync with the speaker's, indicating that the baby was focusing on the information being presented.

This brain synchrony was crucial for the infant's ability to learn the language, suggesting that eye contact plays a critical role in selective social learning in infants. The study, published in Nature Communications, involved 42 infants aged 8-10 months from the UK and Singapore, who listened to three nonsense languages while the speaker's eye visibility was manipulated.

The researchers concluded that eye contact is one of the social cues that communicate intention to the listener and activates the learning process, emphasizing the importance for parents to engage actively with their children using social cues like eye contact.