Abstract
Faces capture and maintain infants’ attention more than other visual stimuli. The present study addresses the impact of early language experience on attention to faces in infancy. It was hypothesized that infants learning two spoken languages (unimodal bilinguals) and hearing infants of Deaf mothers learning British Sign Language and spoken English (bimodal bilinguals) would show enhanced attention to faces compared to monolinguals. The comparison between unimodal and bimodal bilinguals allowed differentiation of the effects of learning two languages, from the effects of increased visual communication in hearing infants of Deaf mothers. Data are presented for two independent samples of infants: Sample 1 included 49 infants between 7 and 10 months (26 monolinguals and 23 unimodal bilinguals), and Sample 2 included 87 infants between 4 and 8 months (32 monolinguals, 25 unimodal bilinguals, and 30 bimodal bilingual infants with a Deaf mother). Eye-tracking was used to analyze infants’ visual scanning of complex arrays including a face and four other stimulus categories. Infants from 4 to 10 months (all groups combined) directed their attention to faces faster than to non-face stimuli (i.e., attention capture), directed more fixations to, and looked longer at faces than non-face stimuli (i.e., attention maintenance). Unimodal bilinguals demonstrated increased attention capture and attention maintenance by faces compared to monolinguals. Contrary to predictions, bimodal bilinguals did not differ from monolinguals in attention capture and maintenance by face stimuli. These results are discussed in relation to the language experience of each group and the close association between face processing and language development in social communication.
Highlights
From the first days of life, infants attend preferentially to faces and face-like stimuli (Johnson et al, 1991; Valenza et al, 1996; Farroni et al, 2005)
Early bilinguals may not demonstrate the classic “other race effect” (Kandel et al, 2016) that is robustly observed in monolinguals (Meissner and Brigham, 2001). These results suggest an impact of early bilingualism on face scanning and face processing
Bimodal bilinguals may achieve this more complex task by increasing their attention to faces. Congruent with this idea, using eye-tracking, we have previously reported that bimodal bilingual infants spend longer looking at talking faces than monolingual infants (Mercure et al, 2018)
Summary
From the first days of life, infants attend preferentially to faces and face-like stimuli (Johnson et al, 1991; Valenza et al, 1996; Farroni et al, 2005). Increased attention capture by faces compared to objects was observed in the same experimental design in 7- and 14-month-olds (Elsabbagh et al, 2013). Longer looking time at face stimuli at 7 months was associated with poorer performance in face recognition in 3-year-old infants at-risk for autism (de Klerk et al, 2014). These results are contrary to the idea that autism evolves from an initial lack of attention or interest in social stimuli early in life, but rather suggest complex interactions between social and attentional mechanisms in early development. The level of attention to faces reflects the infant’s interest and processing needs, and higher attention may sometimes associate with processing difficulties
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