| dc.description.abstract | Eye-tracking techniques were used to examine how 6, 9 and 12 month old typically developing infants perceive social interaction as a third party observer. The infants were presented with movies where two adult actors conversed about everyday events, in different conditions: With eye contact, with their eyes closed, or without eye contact. The two first conditions were also presented in a back-to-back manner. Gaze shifts between the two actors following the flow of the conversation were registered presumed to reflect the infants understanding of the communicative meaning of a social situation in the observed event. The different conditions were included to tentatively disentangle the relative importance of the constituents of the social interaction. There were no significant results between age groups, however, there were differences within age groups. Results demonstrated that 6 month old infants made more gaze shifts with the flow of the conversation when the actors were standing face-to-face with eye contact rather than back-to-back with their eyes open, which indicates the face-to-face effect demonstrated by Augusti, Melinder, and Gredebäck (2010). Furthermore, 9 month old infants made more gaze shifts between the actors in accordance with the conversation when they were standing face-to-face with eye contact rather than face-to-face with their eyes closed. This indicates sensitivity not only to body orientation, but also to the social information inherent in eye contact when observing others social interaction. | eng |