Year: 2026
Type: article
Study design: Observational Study
Abstract: Infants’ tendency to focus on socially relevant cues is commonly referred to as ‘social attention’ and is often conceptualized as a unified construct. However, few studies have examined the concordance among measures that fall under this label. In this study, we assessed 50 ten-month-old infants using three common measures of social visual attention: eye (versus mouth) preference, gaze following, and face preference (versus non-social objects). We also examined their association with concurrent parent-rated socio-communicative abilities. No significant associations were found among the gaze measures. Notably, only eye preference was uniquely associated with communicative abilities (β = 0.364, p = 0.018), while the other gaze measure showed no such relationship. These findings suggest that what is commonly referred to as ‘social attention’ reflects a set of functionally distinct and seemingly unrelated behaviors, highlighting the need to re-evaluate its conceptualization as a unified construct in early development.
Source: Scientific Reports
Authors: Charlotte Viktorsson, Kim Astor
Institution: Uppsala University
Language: English
Subfield: Developmental and Educational Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $2,690
Funder: Uppsala Universitet
OpenAlex ID: W7124978383