Social Gaze Research Articles

Robotic Teaching Aid for Disabled Children: A Sustainable Solution for Industrial Revolution 4.0

Many special needs children suffer from a common characteristics impairment which appear as disability to interpret social cues, fail to use joint-attention tasks as well as a failure in social gaze when communicating. This what makes them different than the normal children. The results of this difficulty are the special needs children often get frustrated when they are unable to expressively share their feeling and socially interact with the community. This research is investigating the problems faced by autistic, down syndrome and slow learner children to respond and communicate appropriately with the people around them and to propose an efficient approach to improve their social interaction. Malaysian education policy is to integrate students with learning difficulties or special educational needs. Thus, the development of a robotic approach using LEGO Mindstorms EV3 to aid the teaching and learning of special needs children especially autism in in Malaysia in introduced in this paper. Robotic approach in special education provides changes, inclusive and sustainable development of the disabled community towards supporting Industrial Revolution 4.0.

Does social presence or the potential for interaction reduce social gaze in online social scenarios? Introducing the "live lab" paradigm.

Research has shown that people's gaze is biased away from faces in the real world but towards them when they are viewed onscreen. Non-equivalent stimulus conditions may have represented a confound in this research, however, as participants viewed onscreen stimuli as pre-recordings where interaction was not possible compared with real-world stimuli which were viewed in real time where interaction was possible. We assessed the independent contributions of online social presence and ability for interaction on social gaze by developing the "live lab" paradigm. Participants in three groups ( N = 132) viewed a confederate as (1) a live webcam stream where interaction was not possible (one-way), (2) a live webcam stream where an interaction was possible (two-way), or (3) a pre-recording. Potential for interaction, rather than online social presence, was the primary influence on gaze behaviour: participants in the pre-recorded and one-way conditions looked more to the face than those in the two-way condition, particularly, when the confederate made "eye contact." Fixation durations to the face were shorter when the scene was viewed live, particularly, during a bid for eye contact. Our findings support the dual function of gaze but suggest that online social presence alone is not sufficient to activate social norms of civil inattention. Implications for the reinterpretation of previous research are discussed.

Changes in Tonic Alertness but Not Voluntary Temporal Preparation Modulate the Attention Elicited by Task-Relevant Gaze and Arrow Cues.

Attention is engaged differently depending on the type and utility of an attentional cue. Some cues like visual transients or social gaze engage attention effortlessly. Others like symbols or geometric shapes require task-relevant deliberate processing. In the laboratory, these effects are often measured using a cuing procedure, which typically manipulates cue type and its utility for the task. Recent research however has uncovered that in addition to spatial orienting, this popular paradigm also engages two additional processes—tonic alertness and voluntary temporal preparation—both of which have been found to modulate spatial orienting elicited by task-irrelevant cues but not task-relevant symbols. Here we assessed whether changes in tonic alertness and voluntary temporal preparation also modulated attentional orienting elicited by task-relevant social gaze and nonsocial arrow cues. Our results indicated that while the effects of spatial attention were reliable in all conditions and did not vary with cue type, the magnitude of orienting was larger under high tonic alertness. Thus, while the cue’s task utility appears to have the power to robustly drive attentional orienting, changes in tonic alertness may modulate the magnitude of such deliberate shifts of attention elicited by task-relevant central social and nonsocial cues.

Oxytocin regulates reunion affiliation with a pairmate following social separation in marmosets.

While separation from significant social partners produces a host of neurobiological and behavioral perturbations, including behavioral distress and increased glucocorticoid production, positive social interactions upon reunion are critical for the reestablishment of normative relationship dynamics and the attenuation of the biobehavioral stress response. The hormone oxytocin has critical and pervasive roles in reproductive and behavioral processes across the lifespan, and plays a particularly prominent role in social bonding. In this study, we examined the extent that oxytocin modulates interactions with a pairmate following separation challenges that varied in both social context (isolation; separation) and duration (long; short), in marmosets. We demonstrated that the impact of pharmacological manipulations of the oxytocin system on the expression of affiliation upon reunion depended on both the context and duration of the separation challenge. Specifically, marmosets treated with an oxytocin antagonist spent less time in proximity with their pairmate upon reunion following a long-separation challenge. During the short-separation challenge, marmosets engaged in more social gaze when separated with an opposite-sex stranger, but not when separated with their mate. Furthermore, marmosets that received the most social gaze from opposite-sex strangers spent the most time in proximity with their long-term mate upon reunion. We also showed that marmosets treated with an OT agonist received increased levels of gaze from opposite-sex strangers, but not from their mate. Overall, these results suggest that marmosets are sensitive to the nature of the social interactions during separation, and subsequently alter their expression of affiliation upon reunion with their long-term mate. These findings further implicate oxytocin as a bond-enhancing molecule that regulates the reestablishment of normative levels of affiliation with a mate following separation, and add to the emerging literature that suggests the OT system underlies critical behavioral processes that contribute to the preservation of long-lasting social bonds.

The "Social Gaze Space": A Taxonomy for Gaze-Based Communication in Triadic Interactions.

Humans substantially rely on non-verbal cues in their communication and interaction with others. The eyes represent a “simultaneous input-output device”: While we observe others and obtain information about their mental states (including feelings, thoughts, and intentions-to-act), our gaze simultaneously provides information about our own attention and inner experiences. This substantiates its pivotal role for the coordination of communication. The communicative and coordinative capacities – and their phylogenetic and ontogenetic impacts – become fully apparent in triadic interactions constituted in its simplest form by two persons and an object. Technological advances have sparked renewed interest in social gaze and provide new methodological approaches. Here we introduce the ‘Social Gaze Space’ as a new conceptual framework for the systematic study of gaze behavior during social information processing. It covers all possible categorical states, namely ‘partner-oriented,’ ‘object-oriented,’ ‘introspective,’ ‘initiating joint attention,’ and ‘responding joint attention.’ Different combinations of these states explain several interpersonal phenomena. We argue that this taxonomy distinguishes the most relevant interactional states along their distinctive features, and will showcase the implications for prominent social gaze phenomena. The taxonomy allows to identify research desiderates that have been neglected so far. We argue for a systematic investigation of these phenomena and discuss some related methodological issues.

Social partner gaze direction and conversational phase; factors affecting social attention during face-to-face conversations in autistic adults?

Social attention is atypical in autism. However, the majority of evidence for this claim comes from studies where the social partner is not physically present and the participants are children. Consequently, to ensure acquisition of a comprehensive overview of social attention in autism, systematic analysis of factors known to influence face-to-face social attention in neurotypicals is necessary and evidence from adulthood is required. This study assessed the influence of experimenter gaze direction (direct or averted) and conversational phase (speaking or listening) on social attention during a face-to-face conversation. Eye-tracking analyses indicated that when the experimenter looked directly at the participant, autistic adults looked at the experimenter's face less than did neurotypical adults. However, this between-group difference was significantly reduced when the experimenter's gaze was averted. Therefore, opportunities for reciprocal social gaze are missed by autistic adults when the social partner makes direct eye contact. A greater proportion of time was spent fixating the experimenter's eye region when participants were speaking compared to listening in both neurotypical and autistic adults. Overall, this study provides a rich picture of the nature of social attention in face-to-face conversations adopted by autistic adults and demonstrates individual variation in social attention styles.

“I longed to cherish mirrored reflections”: Mirroring and Black Female Subjectivity in Carrie Mae Weems's Art against Shame

Through staged photographs in which she herself is often the lead actor or through appropriation of historical photographs, contemporary African American artist Carrie Mae Weems deconstructs the shaming of the black female body in American visual culture and offers counter‐hegemonic images of black female beauty. The mirror has been foundational in Western theories of subjectivity and discussions of beauty. In the artworks I analyze in this article, Weems tactically employs the mirror to engage the topos of shame in order to reject it as a way of seeing the self and to offer a new way of lovingly seeing the self. I use the work of Kelly Oliver, Helen Block Lewis, and bell hooks to articulate the relationships among the mirror, shame, and black female subjectivity in Weems's work. Weems's subjects often reckon with what Oliver calls “social melancholy” as they experience shame while standing before the mirror. However, Weems also shows that by looking again—a critical strategy I explain using Oliver's model of “the loving eye”—her subjects can use the mirror as a corrective to the social shaming gaze and make it a stage for establishing black female subjectivity, a gaze of self‐love, and beauty.

Parent–infant interactions looking for instances of volitional social gaze versus reflexive gaze – an observational study

ABSTRACTVery early precursors of disrupted social behaviours are significant to understanding the possibility of mitigating or changing behaviours through interventions. Spontaneous play situations between infant and parent in two groups of infants aged 8.5–9 months were observed. First, a large number of videos were analysed to develop an observational schedule of play behaviour. Second, 135 videos were used in the comparison of atypical (AT; n = 23) and typically developed (TD; n = 22) infants. Frequency and duration of infants’ orientation towards the parent’s eye zone was significantly higher among TD infants than AT, indicating a stronger social gaze behaviour. Both groups were as competent at screening the surroundings, grabbing, and looking at toys. Finding may indicate an equal competence at reacting to reflexive stimuli. The quality of gaze behaviour provides important information for child healthcare professionals and parents when deciding whether to start supportive intervention or diagnostic investigation.

Brain-to-Brain Synchrony during Naturalistic Social Interactions

The evolution of humans as a highly social species tuned the brain to the social world; yet the mechanisms by which humans coordinate their brain response online during social interactions remain unclear. Using hyperscanning EEG recordings, we measured brain-to-brain synchrony in 104 adults during a male-female naturalistic social interaction, comparing romantic couples and strangers. Neural synchrony was found for couples, but not for strangers, localized to temporal-parietal structures and expressed in gamma rhythms. Brain coordination was not found during a three-minute rest, pinpointing neural synchrony to social interactions among affiliative partners. Brain-to-brain synchrony was linked with behavioral synchrony. Among couples, neural synchrony was anchored in moments of social gaze and positive affect, whereas among strangers, longer durations of social gaze and positive affect correlated with greater neural synchrony. Brain-to-brain synchrony was unrelated to episodes of speech/no-speech or general content of conversation. Our findings link brain-to-brain synchrony to the degree of social connectedness among interacting partners, ground neural synchrony in key nonverbal social behaviors, and highlight the role of human attachment in providing a template for two-brain coordination.

MATERNAL NON-DISCLOSURE OF A CHILD’S BIOLOGICAL FATHER: METHODOLOGICAL REFLECTIONS FROM A JOHANNESBURG STUDY

Due to a dearth of research on mothers who have not disclosed the true biological identity of fathers to their children, there is lack of information on suitable methods for studying this topic. This article aims to share some methodological experiences from the field. Eight one-on-one narrative interviews were conducted with participants who were mothers or female guardians of a child who did not know his or her biological father. The study was located in Johannesburg and explored circumstances that contributed to non-disclosure of a biological father. Participants were recruited through snowballing and were a non-probability sample. They were aged between 33 and 60 years. Each participant was interviewed once. Methodological reflections reported here cover recruitment, interviews and ethics. This article reports a challenge with recruiting middle-class participants when gatekeepers felt that the topic was sensitive and may have legal repercussions for participants. We report on successful recruitment via online platforms and face-to-face community-based announcements. Whilst the response to recruitment was vast, not all interested parties were eligible, including men who did not know their fathers. Women in this study mainly opted for one-on-one interviews instead of focus group discussions. There was a challenge with maintaining complete privacy as some participants themselves agreedto have other family members nearby during the interview. Also, working in this community posed challenges with obtaining member-checking and receiving feedback on the transcripts. This article reports on a number of experiences that are relevant for future similar studies with women in low-income settings. The article suggests an adoption of gender-sensitive recruitment strategies with sensitivity regarding the gendered social gaze that is directed at women who have not disclosed the father’s identity to a child. The positive response from prospective participants indicated willingness from the general population to talk to researchers about unknown fathers. Ethical imperatives such as auditory and visual privacy and the imperative to conduct member checking need to be adapted for local contexts.

Trust Impacts Driver Glance Strategy in Multitasking

Growing evidence supports the idea that patterns of gaze are important to human-machine trust, as they are to human-to-human trust (LaFrance & Mayo, 1976; Kendon, 1967), and indeed potentially all primate social dynamics (Emery, 2000). A growing literature explores trust and gaze toward anthropomorphic robots (Mutlu et al., 2009; Stanton & Stevens, 2014; Van de Brule et al., 2014, Hancock et al., 2011). Less work has investigated far-more-common non-anthropomorphic systems, despite evidence suggesting that operators deploy the same trust patterns toward such interface that they might toward fellow humans (Nass, 1996; Fogg & Nass, 1997), and that they change patterns of visual allocation based upon that trust (Hergeth et al., 2016; Geitner at al., 2017). In critical operational settings, such as driving while multitasking, maximum safety and stability is associated with maximum visual attention devoted to the road (Hancock & Warm, 1989; Strayer, Drews & Johnston, 2003; Sawyer et al., 2014). Social gaze strategies deployed toward an interface suggest competition for these resources, and so applied consequences in terms of adopting appropriate information gathering strategies.

Altered sensitivity to social gaze in the FMR1 premutation and pragmatic language competence

BackgroundThe FMR1 premutation affects 1:291 women and is associated with a range of cognitive, affective, and physical health complications, including deficits in pragmatic language (i.e., social language). This study investigated attention to eye gaze as a fundamental social-cognitive skill that may be impaired in the FMR1 premutation and could underlie pragmatic deficits. Given the high prevalence of the FMR1 premutation, efforts to define its phenotype and mechanistic underpinnings have significant public health implications.MethodsThirty-five women with the FMR1 premutation and 20 control women completed an eye-tracking paradigm that recorded time spent dwelling within the eye region in response to a face displaying either direct or averted gaze. Pragmatic language ability was coded from a conversational sample using the Pragmatic Rating Scale.ResultsWomen with the FMR1 premutation failed to show attentional preference to direct gaze and spent more time dwelling on the averted eyes relative to controls. While dwelling on the eyes was associated with better pragmatic language performance in controls, these variables were unrelated in the women with the FMR1 premutation.ConclusionsAltered sensitivity to social gaze, characterized by increased salience of averted gaze, was observed among women with the FMR1 premutation. Furthermore, women with the FMR1 premutation were unable to capitalize on information conveyed through the eyes to enhance social-communicative engagement, which differed from patterns seen in controls. These findings contribute to the growing characterization of social and communication phenotypes associated with the FMR1 premutation.

On the Imitation of Goal Directed Movements of a Humanoid Robot

Interacting with a social robot should give people a better understanding of the robot’s actions and intentions. In terms of human–human interaction (HHI), people can interpret actions of others in an effortless way. However, it is still unclear whether people can do the same with humanoid robots. Imitation (of the robot’s actions) provides us with an intuitive means for solving this puzzle, because it is closely related to interpreting another’s actions. In the study of human imitation, the theory of goal-directed imitation holds that the imitator tends to imitate the action goals whenever the action goals are salient, otherwise people tend to imitate the action means. We investigated this theory for human robot interaction by manipulating the presence and absence of the goal object when people imitate the robot’s pointing gestures. The results showed that the presence of a goal object reduces people’s goal errors. Moreover, we found that most people tend to match their action means rather than the goals of the robot’s action. To ensure that participants considered the robot as a social agent, we designed a natural interaction task where the turn-taking cue was included: we let the robot look at the human after completing the pointing gesture at varying latencies. As expected, we found that the earlier the robot gazes at people, the shorter the reaction time of people was to start to imitate. Our results show that people are responsive to a robot’s social gaze cues, and that they are responsive to the action goals of robots, although not as much as in HHI.

Human cortical activity evoked by contextual processing in attentional orienting

The ability to assess another person’s direction of attention is paramount in social communication, many studies have reported a similar pattern between gaze and arrow cues in attention orienting. Neuroimaging research has also demonstrated no qualitative differences in attention to gaze and arrow cues. However, these studies were implemented under simple experiment conditions. Researchers have highlighted the importance of contextual processing (i.e., the semantic congruence between cue and target) in attentional orienting, showing that attentional orienting by social gaze or arrow cues could be modulated through contextual processing. Here, we examine the neural activity of attentional orienting by gaze and arrow cues in response to contextual processing using functional magnetic resonance imaging. The results demonstrated that the influence of neural activity through contextual processing to attentional orienting occurred under invalid conditions (when the cue and target were incongruent versus congruent) in the ventral frontoparietal network, although we did not identify any differences in the neural substrates of attentional orienting in contextual processing between gaze and arrow cues. These results support behavioural data of attentional orienting modulated by contextual processing based on the neurocognitive architecture.

Autonomous social gaze model for an interactive virtual character in real‐life settings

AbstractThis paper presents a gaze behavior model for an interactive virtual character situated in the real world. We are interested in estimating which user has an intention to interact, in other words which user is engaged with the virtual character. The model takes into account behavioral cues such as proximity, velocity, posture, and sound; estimates an engagement score; and drives the gaze behavior of the virtual character. Initially, we assign equal weights to these features. Using data collected in a real setting, we analyze which features have higher importance. We found that the model with weighted features correlates better with the ground‐truth data.

Feature and motion-based gaze cuing is linked with reduced social competence

Gaze following is a fundamental ability that plays an important role in human social function. However, the link between these two processes remains elusive. On the one hand, typically developing persons show robust gaze following in laboratory cuing tasks. On the other hand, investigations with individuals with autism suggest that reduced social competence in this population may partly reflect an atypical access to social information through attending to perceptual changes that normally accompany gaze shifts, like luminance or motion transients. Here we investigated if gaze cuing in typically developing individuals was modulated by similar task-irrelevant perceptual changes. In Experiment 1, a social gaze cue was presented with or without a luminance change. In Experiment 2, a social gaze cue was presented together with a motion cue. Both experiments indicated reduced magnitudes of gaze cuing in persons with low social competence on trials containing an irrelevant perceptual change. This suggests that similarly to individuals with autism, typically developing persons with low social competence also utilize idiosyncratic perceptual changes in the environment to access social content, revealing strong links between basic gaze following abilities and a range of social competence within typical individuals.

Maternal depression and anxiety, social synchrony, and infant regulation of negative and positive emotions.

Maternal postpartum depression (PPD) exerts long-term negative effects on infants; yet the mechanisms by which PPD disrupts emotional development are not fully clear. Utilizing an extreme-case design, 971 women reported symptoms of depression and anxiety following childbirth and 215 high and low on depressive symptomatology reported again at 6 months. Of these, mothers diagnosed with major depressive disorder (n = 22), anxiety disorders (n = 19), and controls (n = 59) were visited at 9 months. Mother-infant interaction was microcoded for maternal and infant's social behavior and synchrony. Infant negative and positive emotional expression and self-regulation were tested in 4 emotion-eliciting paradigms: anger with mother, anger with stranger, joy with mother, and joy with stranger. Infants of depressed mothers displayed less social gaze and more gaze aversion. Gaze and touch synchrony were lowest for depressed mothers, highest for anxious mothers, and midlevel among controls. Infants of control and anxious mothers expressed less negative affect with mother compared with stranger; however, maternal presence failed to buffer negative affect in the depressed group. Maternal depression chronicity predicted increased self-regulatory behavior during joy episodes, and touch synchrony moderated the effects of PPD on infant self-regulation. Findings describe subtle microlevel processes by which maternal depression across the postpartum year disrupts the development of infant emotion regulation and suggest that diminished social synchrony, low differentiation of attachment and nonattachment contexts, and increased self-regulation during positive moments may chart pathways for the cross-generational transfer of emotional maladjustment from depressed mothers to their infants. (PsycINFO Database Record

Influences of social cognition on visuospatial attention: A neurophysiological investigation

Event Abstract Back to Event Influences of social cognition on visuospatial attention: A neurophysiological investigation Grace Wei1*, Jacqueline A. Rushby1, Christopher Sufani1 and Frances De Blasio1 1 University of New South Wales, Australia Aims: The reflexive orienting response triggered by non-predictive gaze cues is thought to be driven by a dedicated social neural network responsible for directing attention towards socially salient information. Atypical processing of eye gaze using concomitant perceptual features such as motion transients may underlie reflexive attentional orienting in groups with impairments in social cognition. Thus, reflecting the employment of qualitatively different cognitive mechanisms used to access social information. The present study examined the neurophysiological correlates of gaze processing, considering individual variability in social cognition and the relative salience of social and perceptual cues on visuospatial attention. Method: Electroencephalographic (EEG) activity and behavioural response time (RT) was recorded from 26 healthy adult participants during a spatial cueing task. Participants responded to presentations of a lateralised target on valid (congruently cued) or invalid (incongruently cued) trials across 3 conditions; social gaze, mouth motion and eye motion. Scores on the AQ, LSAS and TAS-20 were used to assess social cognitive functioning. ERP components were obtained with separate PCAs for each cue type and condition. Results: Behavioural analyses revealed cueing effects for the social gaze and mouth motion conditions. Responses did not differ significantly in the eye motion condition. In the social gaze condition, higher scores on the TAS-20 correlated with a reduction of the N2b frontal enhancement to invalid trials (r=.439, p<.05). In the mouth motion condition, higher LSAS and TAS scores were correlated with a greater overall N2b to invalid trials (r=.403, p<.05 and r=.429, p<.05 respectively). Conclusions: Findings suggest the social gaze cue is less salient for those with greater alexithymic traits. An attentional bias towards perceptual changes (mouth motion) parallel impairments in social cognitive functioning, and thus may reflect reduced sensitivity to social stimuli. Such paradigms may benefit investigations in clinical populations. Keywords: Event Related Potentials (ERPs), spatial attention, social cognition, Gaze Processing, Autism Spectrum Disorders, social anxiety, alexithymia, Principal Components Analysis (PCA), N2b Conference: ASP2017: 27th Annual Meeting for the Australasian Society for Psychophysiology, Parramatta, Australia, 29 Nov - 1 Dec, 2017. Presentation Type: Oral Presentation Topic: Abstract (Student Award) Citation: Wei G, Rushby JA, Sufani C and De Blasio F (2019). Influences of social cognition on visuospatial attention: A neurophysiological investigation. Conference Abstract: ASP2017: 27th Annual Meeting for the Australasian Society for Psychophysiology. doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2017.224.00008 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. Received: 30 Oct 2017; Published Online: 25 Jan 2019. * Correspondence: Ms. Grace Wei, University of New South Wales, Kensington, Australia, grace.wei@sydney.edu.au Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. Abstract Info Abstract The Authors in Frontiers Grace Wei Jacqueline A Rushby Christopher Sufani Frances De Blasio Google Grace Wei Jacqueline A Rushby Christopher Sufani Frances De Blasio Google Scholar Grace Wei Jacqueline A Rushby Christopher Sufani Frances De Blasio PubMed Grace Wei Jacqueline A Rushby Christopher Sufani Frances De Blasio Related Article in Frontiers Google Scholar PubMed Abstract Close Back to top Javascript is disabled. Please enable Javascript in your browser settings in order to see all the content on this page.

Differences in praxis performance and receptive language during fingerspelling between deaf children with and without autism spectrum disorder.

Children with autism spectrum disorder present with a variety of social communication deficits such as atypicalities in social gaze and verbal and non-verbal communication delays as well as perceptuo-motor deficits like motor incoordination and dyspraxia. In this study, we had the unique opportunity to study praxis performance in deaf children with and without autism spectrum disorder in a fingerspelling context using American Sign Language. A total of 11 deaf children with autism spectrum disorder and 11 typically developing deaf children aged between 5 and 14 years completed a fingerspelling task. Children were asked to fingerspell 15 different words shown on an iPad. We coded various praxis errors and fingerspelling time. The deaf children with autism spectrum disorder had greater errors in pace, sequence precision, accuracy, and body part use and also took longer to fingerspell each word. Additionally, the deaf children with autism spectrum disorder had poor receptive language skills and this strongly correlated with their praxis performance and autism severity. These findings extend the evidence for dyspraxia in hearing children with autism spectrum disorder to deaf children with autism spectrum disorder. Poor sign language production in children with autism spectrum disorder may contribute to their poor gestural learning/comprehension and vice versa. Our findings have therapeutic implications for children with autism spectrum disorder when teaching sign language.

Acute oxytocin improves memory and gaze following in male but not female nursery-reared infant macaques

Exogenous oxytocin administration is widely reported to improve social cognition in human and nonhuman primate adults. Risk factors of impaired social cognition, however, emerge in infancy. Early interventions-when plasticity is greatest-are critical to reverse negative outcomes. We tested the hypothesis that oxytocin may exert similar positive effects on infant social cognition, as in adults. To test this idea, we assessed the effectiveness of acute, aerosolized oxytocin on two foundational social cognitive skills: working memory (i.e., ability to briefly hold and process information) and social gaze (i.e., tracking the direction of others' gaze) in 1-month-old nursery-reared macaque monkeys (Macaca mulatta). We did not predict sex differences, but we included sex as a factor in our analyses to test whether our effects would be generalizable across both males and females. In a double-blind, placebo-controlled design, we found that females were more socially skilled at baseline compared to males, and that oxytocin improved working memory and gaze following, but only in males. These sex differences, while unexpected, may be due to interactions with gonadal steroids and may be relevant to sexually dimorphic disorders of social cognition, such as male-biased autism spectrum disorder, for which oxytocin has been proposed as a potential treatment. In sum, we report the first evidence that oxytocin may influence primate infant cognitive abilities. Moreover, these behavioral effects appear sexually dimorphic, highlighting the importance of considering sex differences. Oxytocin effects observed in one sex may not be generalizable to the other sex.