AUTHOR=Smith Nicholas A., Gibilisco Colleen R., Meisinger Rachel E., Hankey Maren 

TITLE=Asymmetry in infants' selective attention to facial features during visual processing of infant-directed speech

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Psychology

VOLUME=4

YEAR=2013

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00601

DOI=10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00601

ISSN=1664-1078

ABSTRACT=<p>Two experiments used eye tracking to examine how infant and adult observers distribute their eye gaze on videos of a mother producing infant- and adult-directed speech. Both groups showed greater attention to the eyes than to the nose and mouth, as well as an asymmetrical focus on the talker's right eye for infant-directed speech stimuli. Observers continued to look more at the talker's apparent right eye when the video stimuli were mirror flipped, suggesting that the asymmetry reflects a perceptual processing bias rather than a stimulus artifact, which may be related to cerebral lateralization of emotion processing.</p>