The Developmental Origins of Gaze‐Following in Human Infants

Abstract

During the first year of life, infants develop the capacity to follow the gaze of others. This behavior allows sharing attention and facilitates language acquisition and cognitive development. This article reviews studies that investigated gaze-following before 12 months of age in typically developing infants and discusses current theoretical perspectives on early GF. Recent research has revealed that early GF is highly dependent on situational constraints and individual characteristics, but theories that describe the underlying mechanisms have partly failed to consider this complexity. We propose a novel framework termed the perceptual narrowing account of GF that may have the potential to integrate existing theoretical accounts.