A new look at parent-infant interaction

Abstract

As children grow up, they interact with many people: caregivers, friends, classmates, and so on. Many of these interactions occur face to face and involve both verbal and nonverbal communication. This thesis is focused on nonverbal behavior (e.g., gaze and gestures). The first part of the thesis is methodological. Chapter 2 answers the question of how to choose a setup to investigate gaze and other nonverbal behaviors in human interaction. Chapter 3 answers the question of whether computer-vision-based gaze estimation techniques are good enough for the study of gaze in different face-to-face contexts, particularly those between parents and infants. The second part of the thesis presents three studies investigating gaze in face-to-face interaction using a novel dual eye-tracking setup. Chapter 4 examines the role of gaze in speech perception, Chapter 5 is concerned with the role of the parent in infant turn following and turn anticipation, and Chapter 6 explores the role of the parent in infant action prediction. The thesis concludes with a discussion of the representativeness of different experimental paradigms for the study of gaze and other nonverbal behaviors in varied face-to-face contexts and the challenges that remain.