Monolingual and bilingual infants' attention to talking faces: evidence from eye-tracking and Bayesian modeling

Abstract

Introduction: A substantial amount of research from the last two decades suggests that infants' attention to the eyes and mouth regions of talking faces could be a supporting mechanism by which they acquire their native(s) language(s). Importantly, attentional strategies seem to be sensitive to three types of constraints: the properties of the stimulus, the infants' attentional control skills (which improve with age and brain maturation) and their previous linguistic and non-linguistic knowledge. The goal of the present paper is to present a probabilistic model to simulate infants' visual attention control to talking faces as a function of their language learning environment (monolingual vs. bilingual), attention maturation (i.e., age) and their increasing knowledge concerning the task at stake (detecting and learning to anticipate information displayed in the eyes or the mouth region of the speaker). Methods: To test the model, we first considered experimental eye-tracking data from monolingual and bilingual infants (aged between 12 and 18 months; in part already published) exploring a face speaking in their native language. In each of these conditions, we compared the proportion of total looking time on each of the two areas of interest (eyes vs. mouth of the speaker). Results: In line with previous studies, our experimental results show a strong bias for the mouth (over the eyes) region of the speaker, regardless of age. Furthermore, monolingual and bilingual infants appear to have different developmental trajectories, which is consistent with and extends previous results observed in the first year. Comparison of model simulations with experimental data shows that the model successfully captures patterns of visuo-attentional orientation through the three parameters that effectively modulate the simulated visuo-attentional behavior. Discussion: We interpret parameter values, and find that they adequately reflect evolution of strength and speed of anticipatory learning; we further discuss their descriptive and explanatory power.