TY - JOUR
T1 - The development and neural basis of referential gaze perception.
AU - Senju, Atsushi
AU - Johnson, Mark H.
AU - Csibra, Gergely
PY - 2006
Y1 - 2006
N2 - Infants are sensitive to the referential information conveyed by others' eye gaze, which could be one of the developmental foundations of theory of mind. To investigate the neural correlates of gaze-object relations, we recorded ERPs from adults and 9-month-old infants while they watched scenes containing gaze shifts either towards or away from the location of a preceding object. In adults, object-incongruent gaze shifts elicited enhanced ERP amplitudes over the occipito-temporal area (N330). In infants, a similar posterior ERP component (N290) was greater for object-incongruent gaze shifts, which suggests that by the age of 9 months infants encode referential information of gaze in a similar way to adults. In addition, in infants we observed an early frontal ERP component (anterior N200), which showed higher amplitude in response to the perception of object-congruent gaze shifts. This component may reflect fast-track processing of socially relevant information, such as the detection of communicative or informative situations, and could form a developmental foundation for attention sharing, social learning and theory of mind.
AB - Infants are sensitive to the referential information conveyed by others' eye gaze, which could be one of the developmental foundations of theory of mind. To investigate the neural correlates of gaze-object relations, we recorded ERPs from adults and 9-month-old infants while they watched scenes containing gaze shifts either towards or away from the location of a preceding object. In adults, object-incongruent gaze shifts elicited enhanced ERP amplitudes over the occipito-temporal area (N330). In infants, a similar posterior ERP component (N290) was greater for object-incongruent gaze shifts, which suggests that by the age of 9 months infants encode referential information of gaze in a similar way to adults. In addition, in infants we observed an early frontal ERP component (anterior N200), which showed higher amplitude in response to the perception of object-congruent gaze shifts. This component may reflect fast-track processing of socially relevant information, such as the detection of communicative or informative situations, and could form a developmental foundation for attention sharing, social learning and theory of mind.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=33847227538&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/17470910600989797
DO - 10.1080/17470910600989797
M3 - Article
C2 - 18633789
AN - SCOPUS:33847227538
SN - 1747-0919
VL - 1
SP - 220
EP - 234
JO - Social Neuroscience
JF - Social Neuroscience
IS - 3-4
ER -