Selective Attention to the Articulating Mouth of Talking Faces as a Marker of Language Development in the First Two Years of Life: Developmental Pathways, Influences, and Challenges
dr Itziar Lozano IP PAN (stacjonarnie)
Data:
20 listopada 2025
Decades of eye-tracking research highlight the importance of infants’ learning to efficiently “look at speech” as a critical foundation for early language acquisition. Infants’ ability to attend to the mouth of talking faces is foundational to that process: increased mouth-looking across infancy predicts stronger vocabulary at the end of the first year (Belteki et al., 2022; Lozano et al., 2022; Tomalski et al., 2013). Yet, the developmental picture of selective attention to articulating mouth remains inconsistent. In this talk I will present and discuss evidence on (1) how mouth-looking changes across the first two years of life, (2) which endogenous (e.g., biological sex, familial likelihood for autism) and exogenous (e.g., language familiarity, cultural context) factors influence developmental trajectories of mouth-looking during infancy and toddlerhood, and (3) which methodological challenges we currently face in the field. I will draw on my own PhD data, our ongoing and past work at the Neurocognitive Development Lab (IP PAS Babylab), and current collaborations with colleagues at CBCD Birkbeck (UK), DiVE Lab Uppsala University (Sweden), and Medea BabyLab at MEDEA Hospital/Research Center (Italy).