Most infants are more interested in faces than objects and show a discernible increase in this 'face preference' during the second half of the first year. We use infrared eye-tracking to quantify individual differences in infants' face preference and to examine whether these differences i) reflect variations in a specific, heritable tendency to actively orient to social cues, ii) shape parents' behaviour, and iii) are developmentally significant by predicting increased prosocial behaviours and reduced maladaptive, callous-unemotional behaviours at later ages. Eye-tracking and infant-parent interaction data will be collected from a representative sample of monozygotic (MZ), same-sex dizygotic (DZ), and non-related infants at 7 and 9 months of age. Social behaviours will be assessed at 24 and 48 months. The project generates a high-resolution, open dataset and may add to our knowledge on the mechanisms that promote beneficial affiliative signalling and typical social development.

2021

2025