Abstract
A precondition for successful communication between people is the detection of signals indicating the intention to communicate, such as eye contact or calling a person's name. In adults, establishing communication by eye contact or calling a person's name results in overlapping activity in right prefrontal cortex, suggesting that, regardless of modality, the intention to communicate is detected by the same brain region. We measured prefrontal cortex responses in 5-month-olds using near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) to examine the neural basis of detecting communicative signals across modalities in early development. Infants watched human faces that either signaled eye contact or directed their gaze away from the infant, and they also listened to voices that addressed them with their own name or another name. The results revealed that infants recruit adjacent but non-overlapping regions in the left dorsal prefrontal cortex when they process eye contact and own name. Moreover, infants that responded sensitively to eye contact in the one prefrontal region were also more likely to respond sensitively to their own name in the adjacent prefrontal region as revealed in a correlation analysis, suggesting that responding to communicative signals in these two regions might be functionally related. These NIRS results suggest that infants selectively process and attend to communicative signals directed at them. However, unlike adults, infants do not seem to recruit a common prefrontal region when processing communicative signals of different modalities. The implications of these findings for our understanding of infants’ developing communicative abilities are discussed.
Highlights
The ability to detect whether one is being addressed is of critical importance to successfully communicate with others
Infants watched human faces that either signaled eye contact or directed their gaze away from the infant, and they listened to voices that addressed them with their own name or another name.The results revealed that infants recruit adjacent but non-overlapping regions in the left dorsal prefrontal cortex when they process eye contact and own name
A left dorsal prefrontal region showed sensitivity to infants’ own name as indexed by a significantly increased oxyHb concentration when own name was compared to the control name, while an adjacent left dorsal prefrontal region responded sensitively to eye contact cues as indexed by a significantly increased oxyHb concentration when eye contact is compared to averted gaze
Summary
The ability to detect whether one is being addressed is of critical importance to successfully communicate with others. The most common way to initiate intentional communication is by using so-called ostensive signals such as calling someone’s name and looking directly at someone to establish eye contact. These two ostensive signals differ in modality and most low-level perceptual features, they both serve to make the intention to communicate manifest to the receiver (Sperber and Wilson, 1995; Csibra, 2010). It has been argued that mentalizing, the ability to attribute mental states such as intentions to others (Frith and Frith, 1999, 2006), is involved in understanding communication already at the stage at which a sender initiates communication through eye contact or calling someone’s name. Using functional resonance imaging (fMRI), Kampe et al (2003) have shown that, in adults, calling a person’s name or making eye contact activate common brain regions that are
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