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Mouth Motion and Growing Interest in Speech Drives the Developmental Shift in Infant Attention to the Mouth of a Talking Face

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Date Issued:
2014
Summary:
Lewkowicz & Hansen-Tift found that when 4-month-old infants see and hear a person talking, they look more at her eyes but that 8- and 10-mo infants look more at her mouth. The developmental attentional shift to the mouth reflects infants’ growing interest in speech. Attention to the mouth enables infants to gain access to redundant and maximally salient audiovisual cues which then facilitate speech and language acquisition. We investigated the separate role of mouth movement and vocalization cues in the attentional shift from a talker’s eyes to the talker’s mouth. In 3 experiments, we used an eye-tracker to measure the proportion of attention infants, 4-, 8-, and 10-mo, allocate to the eyes and mouth of a static/silent face, a static/talking face, and a silently talking face. We found that when infants see a static person, they attend to the eyes. Lewkowicz & Hansen-Tift found that when infants see and hear a person talking, 4-mos look at the eyes whereas 8- and 10-mos look at the mouth. When infants see a silently talking person, only 10-mos look at the mouth. These findings demonstrate that the shift from the eyes to the mouth is mediated by three factors: dynamic visual speech cues, an emerging interest in speech, and the redundancy of audiovisual speech. Thus, younger infants are not interested in speech so they focus on the eyes, whereas older infants become interested in speech, shifting their focus to the mouth, but initially at 8 m, this shift requires that speech be multisensory.
Title: Mouth Motion and Growing Interest in Speech Drives the Developmental Shift in Infant Attention to the Mouth of a Talking Face.
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Name(s): Tift, Amy H.
Minar, Nicholas J.
Lewkowicz, David J.
Graduate College
Type of Resource: text
Genre: Abstract
Date Created: 2014
Date Issued: 2014
Publisher: Florida Atlantic University
Place of Publication: Boca Raton, Fla.
Physical Form: application/pdf
Extent: 1 p.
Language(s): English
Summary: Lewkowicz & Hansen-Tift found that when 4-month-old infants see and hear a person talking, they look more at her eyes but that 8- and 10-mo infants look more at her mouth. The developmental attentional shift to the mouth reflects infants’ growing interest in speech. Attention to the mouth enables infants to gain access to redundant and maximally salient audiovisual cues which then facilitate speech and language acquisition. We investigated the separate role of mouth movement and vocalization cues in the attentional shift from a talker’s eyes to the talker’s mouth. In 3 experiments, we used an eye-tracker to measure the proportion of attention infants, 4-, 8-, and 10-mo, allocate to the eyes and mouth of a static/silent face, a static/talking face, and a silently talking face. We found that when infants see a static person, they attend to the eyes. Lewkowicz & Hansen-Tift found that when infants see and hear a person talking, 4-mos look at the eyes whereas 8- and 10-mos look at the mouth. When infants see a silently talking person, only 10-mos look at the mouth. These findings demonstrate that the shift from the eyes to the mouth is mediated by three factors: dynamic visual speech cues, an emerging interest in speech, and the redundancy of audiovisual speech. Thus, younger infants are not interested in speech so they focus on the eyes, whereas older infants become interested in speech, shifting their focus to the mouth, but initially at 8 m, this shift requires that speech be multisensory.
Identifier: FA00005857 (IID)
Collection: FAU Student Research Digital Collection
Note(s): The Fifth Annual Graduate Research Day was organized by Florida Atlantic University’s Graduate Student Association. Graduate students from FAU Colleges present abstracts of original research and posters in a competition for monetary prizes, awards, and recognition
Held by: Florida Atlantic University Libraries
Sublocation: Digital Library
Persistent Link to This Record: http://purl.flvc.org/fau/fd/FA00005857
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Host Institution: FAU
Is Part of Series: Florida Atlantic University Digital Library Collections.