At birth, newborns prefer upright faces over other stimuli, indicating that they already pay specific attention to facial internal features, with expectations about their featural configuration. The study investigated whether surgical mask wearing in maternity wards due to COVID-19 disrupts newborns' face processing. Using a visual preference paradigm, newborns saw paired images of the same face. In Condition 1, both faces were upright, one masked, one unmasked. No preference was found. In Condition 2, newborns saw an upright masked face versus the same masked face but inverted (i.e., upside down), showing a preference for the upright version. Findings suggest that masked and unmasked static faces equally attract newborns' attention and that surgical masks do not disrupt their face configuration processing. It has implications for recommendations to the general public, especially individuals in contact with newborns.

By 9 months, infants recognize own-race faces from static images, but struggle when familiarized with naturalistic audiovisual (AV) talking faces, despite daily exposure to dynamic, speaking faces. This study examined whether AV speech or AV mouth chewing motion disrupts face recognition and whether selective attention to the mouth or cognitive load mediates this effect. We recorded the eye gaze of 10-month-olds (N = 133) and 20-month-olds (N = 125) during a Visual Paired Comparison task in three conditions: Talking (AV, speech, dynamic), Chewing (AV, no speech, dynamic), and Static (no AV, no speech, static). Infants focused more on the mouth in Chewing, the eyes in Static, and equally on both in Talking. However, recognition occurred only in the Static and Chewing conditions, independently of age. These findings suggest that AV speech, not just motion, increases cognitive load and disrupts face memorization regardless of selective attention, impacting early face processing.

Infant gaze-following skills and selective attention to the mouth of talking faces during their first year correlate with their vocabulary growth in their second year. This correlational evidence has led to the hypothesis that these attentional strategies are key mechanisms supporting word acquisition, a process which drastically improves during toddlerhood. If so, covering the eyes or mouth region of a talking face that teaches toddlers novel word-object associations should disrupt or diminish their word learning performance. To test this relationship causally, we recorded eye gaze in 17- to 42-month-old toddlers (N = 153) while performing an audiovisual fast-mapping task in one of three conditions: (a) full face, where the speaker's face was fully visible; (b) glasses, where the eye region was covered with black opaque glasses; and (c) mask, where the mouth and nose were covered with a black surgical mask. The results showed that toddlers aged 24 months and above learned the new word-object associations and, crucially, that they did so independently of condition. Moreover, correlational evidence showed that word learning performance related with toddlers' gaze-following behavior (i.e., target-object looking and face-target shifts) but not with attention to the eyes or mouth. These findings suggest that the capacity for object word-form association from a quick audiovisual interaction emerges around 24 months and that toddlers' optimal attentional strategy at this stage involves social understanding and object exploration rather than focusing on speakers' eyes or mouth. The implications of these results are discussed, particularly in the context of naturalistic vocabulary learning environments. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

To segment words in unfamiliar speech, listeners are known to exploit both native prosodic cues and statistical cues available in the speech signal. However, how and when these cues are combined remains a matter of debate. Here, we studied how transitional probabilities (TPs) and prosodic phrasal boundaries are combined by French speakers to segment words. Since French does not have lexical stress, prosodic phrasal boundaries unambiguously signal word boundaries, providing a unique possibility to test whether prosodic cues can overcome statistical ones, and constrain further statistically based segmentation. We tested French adults in an artificial speech segmentation task, manipulating the consistency between prosodic and TP cues, signaling either the same or different word boundaries. Results showed that participants favored prosodic phrasal boundaries over TPs, regardless of exposure time to the speech stream (Experiment 1: 3.5 minutes; Experiment 2: 7 min), supporting a prosodically driven statistical segmentation of the speech stream.

Infants prefer infant-directed (ID) speech. Concerning talking faces, previous research showed that 3- and 5-month-olds prefer faces that produce native ID than native adult-directed (AD) speech, regardless of background speech being ID, AD or silent. Here, we explored whether infants also show a preference for non-native ID speech. We presented 3- and 6-month-old infants with pairs of talking faces, one producing non-native ID speech and the other non-native AD speech, either in silence (Experiment 1) or accompanied by non-native ID or AD background speech (Experiment 2). Results from Experiment 1 showed an overall preference for the silent ID talking faces across both age groups, suggesting a reliance on cross-linguistic, potentially universal cues for this preference. However, Experiment 2 showed that preference for ID faces was disrupted at 3 months when auditory speech was present (ID or AD). At 6 months, infants maintained a preference for ID talking faces, but only when accompanied by ID speech. These findings show that auditory non-native speech interferes with infants' processing of ID talking faces. They also suggest that by 6 months, infants start associating ID features from faces and voices irrespective of language familiarity, suggesting that infants' ID preference may be universal and amodal.

IntroductionA 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).MethodsTo 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).ResultsIn 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.DiscussionWe 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.

An infant's face- and speech-processing system develops during the first year from broad and non-specific to becoming a system that is tuned to the faces and languages to which they are most exposed. This phenomenon is called perceptual narrowing. Before 9 months of age, infants are capable of discriminating and recognizing individuals from any type of race/species faces. However, with increased exposure to own-race and own-species faces and lack of exposure to other types of faces, by 9 months of age, they have improved their ability to discriminate own-race faces, while they show increased difficulty in the discrimination of faces from other races and species. According to the literature, we can conclude that, by 12 months of age, most human perceptual systems have become perceptually tuned and adult-like; however, this is not true. In the following sections, we will argue that perceptual narrowing for faces occurs during the same developmental period as it does for language, and that it can be prevented or modulated with sufficient exposure to unfamiliar sounds or face types. We conclude that narrowing has been designed by natural selection to tailor an individual's cognition to their local social context. It might occur for every domain pertaining to social communication-from speech processing to emotion or gesture perception-in a process that gradually adapts the infant to their native social group.

Previous studies found an impact of language familiarity on face recognition in 9- and 12-month-olds. Own race faces are better recognized when associated with native language, whereas for other race faces, it is with non-native language. The aim of this study is to investigate if language familiarity can also influence abstract pattern recognition. We tested 9- to 12-month-old monolingual infants with a visual paired-comparison task. During a 30-s familiarization phase, infants were shown an image of abstract patterns associated with an auditory soundtrack of a speaker reciting a story either in their native (French) or in a non-native language (German). After the familiarization, the familiar and a new abstract pattern were displayed side by side for the recognition test. We found a significant preference for the novel object in the native language condition but not in the non-native condition. These results suggest that language familiarity effects on infant memory are not specific to faces but also influence, on a larger scale, how infants process their immediate visual environment.

Over the last few decades, developmental (psycho) linguists have demonstrated that perceiving talking faces audio-visually is important for early language acquisition. Using mostly well-controlled and screen-based laboratory approaches, this line of research has shown that paying attention to talking faces is likely to be one of the powerful strategies infants use to learn their native(s) language(s). In this review, we combine evidence from these screen-based studies with another line of research that has studied how infants learn novel words and deploy their visual attention during naturalistic play. In our view, this is an important step toward developing an integrated account of how infants effectively extract audiovisual information from talkers' faces during early language learning. We identify three factors that have been understudied so far, despite the fact that they are likely to have an important impact on how infants deploy their attention (or not) toward talking faces during social interactions: social contingency, speaker characteristics, and task- dependencies. Last, we propose ideas to address these issues in future research, with the aim of reducing the existing knowledge gap between current experimental studies and the many ways infants can and do effectively rely upon the audiovisual information extracted from talking faces in their real-life language environment.

Between 6 and 9 months, while infant's ability to discriminate faces within their own racial group is maintained, discrimination of faces within other-race groups declines to a point where 9-month-old infants fail to discriminate other-race faces. Such face perception narrowing can be overcome in various ways at 9 or 12 months of age, such as presenting faces with emotional expressions. Can language itself modulate face narrowing? Many adult studies suggest that language has an impact on the recognition of individuals. For example, adults remember faces previously paired with their native language more accurately than faces paired with a non-native language. We have previously found that from 9 months of age, own-race faces associated with the native language can be learned and recognized whereas own-race faces associated with a non-native language cannot. Based on the language familiarity effect, we hypothesized that the native language could restore recognition of other-race faces after perceptual narrowing has happened. We tested 9- and 12-month-old Caucasian infants. During a familiarization phase, infants were shown still photographs of an Asian face while audio was played either in the native or in the non-native language. Immediately after the familiarization, the familiar face and a novel one were displayed side-by-side for the recognition test. We compared the proportional looking time to the new face to the chance level. Both 9- and 12-month-old infants exhibited recognition memory for the other-race face when familiarized with non-native speech, but not with their native speech. Native language did not facilitate recognition of other-race faces after 9 months of age but a non-native language did, suggesting that 9- and 12-month-olds already have expectations about which language an individual should talk (or at least not talk). Our results confirm the strong links between face and speech processing during infancy.

The "bouba-kiki effect", where "bouba" is perceived round and "kiki" spiky, remains a puzzling enigma. We solve it by combining mathematical findings largely unknown in the field, with computational models and novel experimental evidence. We reveal that this effect relies on two acoustic cues: spectral balance and temporal continuity. We demonstrate that it is not speech-specific but rather rooted in physical properties of objects, creating audiovisual regularities in the environment. Round items are mathematically bound to produce, when hitting or rolling on a surface, lower-frequency spectra and more continuous sounds than same-size spiky objects. Finally, we show that adults are sensitive to such regularities. Hence, intuitive physics impacts language perception and possibly language acquisition and evolution too.

To prevent the spread of COVID-19, face masks were mandatory in many public spaces around the world. Since faces are the gateway to early social cognition, this raised major concerns about the effect face masks may have on infants' attention to faces as well as on their language and social development. The goal of the present study was to assess how face masks modulate infants' attention to faces over the course of the first year of life. We measured 3, 6, 9, and 12-month-olds' looking behavior using a paired visual preference paradigm under two experimental conditions. First, we tested infants' preference for upright masked or unmasked faces of the same female individual. We found that regardless of age, infants looked equally long at the masked and unmasked faces. Second, we compared infants' attention to an upright masked versus an inverted masked face. Three- and 6-month-olds looked equally long to the masked faces when they were upright or inverted. However, 9- and 12-month-old infants showed a novelty preference for the inverted masked face. Our findings suggest that more experience with faces, including masked faces, leads to efficient adaptations of infants' visual system for processing impoverished social stimuli, such as partially occluded faces.

The probability of recognizing a word depends on the position of fixation during processing. In typical readers, the resulting word-recognition curves are asymmetrical, showing a left-of-centre optimal viewing position (OVP). First, we report behavioural results from dyslexic participants who show atypical word-recognition curves characterized by the OVP being right of centre with recognition probability being higher on the rightmost than on the leftmost letters. Second, we used BRAID, a Bayesian model of word recognition that implements gaze position, an acuity gradient, lateral interference and a visual attention component, to examine how variations in the deployment of visual attention would affect the OVP curves. We show that the atypical dyslexic curves are well simulated assuming a narrow distribution of visual attention and a shifting of visual attention towards the left visual field. These behavioural and modelling findings are discussed in light of current theories of visual attention deficits in developmental dyslexia.

During their first year, infants attune to the faces and language(s) that are frequent in their environment. The present study investigates the impact of language familiarity on how French-learning 9- and 12-month-olds recognize own-race faces. In Experiment 1, infants were familiarized with the talking face of a Caucasian bilingual German-French speaker reciting a nursery rhyme in French (native condition) or in German (non-native condition). In the test phase, infants' face recognition was tested by presenting a picture of the speaker's face they were familiarized with, side by side with a novel face. At 9 and 12 months, neither infants in the native condition nor the ones in the non-native condition clearly recognized the speaker's face. In Experiment 2, we familiarized infants with the still picture of the speaker's face, along with the auditory speech stream. This time, both 9- and 12-month-olds recognized the face of the speaker they had been familiarized with, but only if she spoke in their native language. This study shows that at least from 9 months of age, language modulates the way faces are recognized.

Human adults observe and recognize many other conspecifics' faces on a daily basis. This automated process is so efficient that people generally do not consider the intricacy of this task or the complicated neural bases that underlie this ability, which is so crucial for social interaction. Research dating back to the 1960s has shown that newborn infants demonstrate a visual preference for human faces over other complex stimuli and that the face-processing system develops rapidly during the first year of life. The system continues to mature and develop into adulthood with changes occurring throughout infancy, childhood, and adolescence. Behavioral, neurophysiological, and clinical studies conducted over the past 50 years have contributed to our understanding of the development of face-processing system.

The existence of critical or sensitive periods has been argued for cognitive functions such as language, which allows for communication with conspecifics. Faces also play a crucial role in establishing social communication. Here we discuss if critical or sensitive period concepts apply to face processing. We describe how experience shapes face processing during development. While there is not clear support for a critical period, there is some evidence of a sensitive period, with the face processing system showing early sensitivity to experience in the first year, remaining flexible until 10-12 years, and becoming less sensitive to experience thereafter. We also discuss possible links between sensitive periods for faces and language. We conclude that sensitive periods may reflect the need to adapt rapidly to the communication culture within one's native social group, while retaining a degree of openness to perturbations to one's local environment that can occur across the lifespan.

Adults and toddlers systematically associate pseudowords such as "bouba" and "kiki" with round and spiky shapes, respectively, a sound symbolic phenomenon known as the "bouba-kiki effect". To date, whether this sound symbolic effect is a property of the infant brain present at birth or is a learned aspect of language perception remains unknown. Yet, solving this question is fundamental for our understanding of early language acquisition. Indeed, an early sensitivity to such sound symbolic associations could provide a powerful mechanism for language learning, playing a bootstrapping role in the establishment of novel sound-meaning associations. The aim of the present meta-analysis (SymBouKi) is to provide a quantitative overview of the emergence of the bouba-kiki effect in infancy and early childhood. It allows a high-powered assessment of the true sound symbolic effect size by pooling over the entire set of 11 extant studies (six published, five unpublished), entailing data from 425 participants between 4 and 38 months of age. The quantitative data provide statistical support for a moderate, but significant, sound symbolic effect. Further analysis found a greater sensitivity to sound symbolism for bouba-type pseudowords (i.e., round sound-shape correspondences) than for kiki-type pseudowords (i.e., spiky sound-shape correspondences). For the kiki-type pseudowords, the effect emerged with age. Such discrepancy challenges the view that sensitivity to sound symbolism is an innate language mechanism rooted in an exuberant interconnected brain. We propose alternative hypotheses where both innate and learned mechanisms are at play in the emergence of sensitivity to sound symbolic relationships.

To probably overcome the challenge of learning two languages at the same time, infants raised in a bilingual environment pay more attention to the mouth of talking faces than same-age monolinguals. Here we examined the consequences of such preference for monolingual and bilingual infants' ability to perceive nonspeech information coming from the eyes or the mouth region of talking faces. Using a learning procedure, we recorded 15-month-olds' and 18-month-olds' gaze while watching, at each trial, a speaker producing a sentence systematically followed by a nonspeech movement (eyebrow raise vs. lip protrusion). Differences were obtained for infants in the eyebrow-raise condition. While 15-month-old monolinguals and 18-month-old bilinguals learned to anticipate the eyebrow-raise movement before its appearance, 15-month-old bilinguals did not (i.e., they continued to look at the mouth region). Thus, bilingualism appears to impact not only how infants explore talking faces but also how they learn from them.

Language LearningVolume 68, Issue S1 p. 7-13 INTRODUCTION Multimodal Language Learning: How to Crack the Speech Code by Ear and by Eye Correction(s) for this article ERRATUM Volume 70Issue 2Language Learning pages: 589-589 First Published online: May 29, 2020 Mathilde Fort, Corresponding Author Mathilde Fort mathilde.frt@gmail.com University Grenoble AlpesCorrespondence concerning this article should be addressed to Mathilde Fort, Université Grenoble Alpes, GIPSA-lab, 1180 avenue Centrale BP25, 38031 Grenoble CEDEX 9, France. E-mail: mathilde.frt@gmail.comSearch for more papers by this authorNuria Sebastian-Galles, Nuria Sebastian-Galles Universitat Pompeu FabraSearch for more papers by this author Mathilde Fort, Corresponding Author Mathilde Fort mathilde.frt@gmail.com University Grenoble AlpesCorrespondence concerning this article should be addressed to Mathilde Fort, Université Grenoble Alpes, GIPSA-lab, 1180 avenue Centrale BP25, 38031 Grenoble CEDEX 9, France. E-mail: mathilde.frt@gmail.comSearch for more papers by this authorNuria Sebastian-Galles, Nuria Sebastian-Galles Universitat Pompeu FabraSearch for more papers by this author First published: 24 May 2018 https://doi.org/10.1111/lang.12279Citations: 1Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Citing Literature Volume68, IssueS1Multimodal Language Learning: How to Crack the Speech Code by Ear and by EyeJune 2018Pages 7-13 RelatedInformation