Eye contact may act as a learning “switch” for babies’ brains
Do babies soak up everything they hear? Not quite. A study of infants in the U.K. and Singapore suggests eye contact helps them decide which words are worth learning, possibly by syncing their brain activity with the speaker's.
New research indicates that direct eye contact from adults can help babies learn which words to pick up. A study published in Nature Communications found that infants' brain activity aligns with adults' when they maintain direct eye contact. This neural coupling could serve as a "switch" to guide infants' selective word learning.
In the experiment, 47 infants aged around nine months were exposed to artificial languages in three conditions: full gaze, partial gaze, and no gaze. The infants learned more effectively when the adult speaker's eyes were visible through glasses with clear lenses. The findings suggest that social cues, like eye contact, play a crucial role in helping young minds acquire language.
Written by urgent.news from PsyPost's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
