Abstract Little is understood about how children attend to and learn from gaze when learning new words, and whether gaze confers any benefits beyond word mapping. We examine whether 6- to 11-year-old typically-developing children (n = 43) and children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (n = 25) attend to and learn with gaze differently from another directional cue, an arrow cue. An eye-tracker recorded children’s attention to videos while they were taught novel words with a gaze cue or an arrow cue. Videos included objects when they were static or when they were manipulated to demonstrate the object’s function. Word learning was measured immediately after videos and one week later. In contrast to an arrow cue, children in both groups looked longer at a gaze cue and had more contingent looks from the gaze cue to the referent. Exploratory analyses demonstrated that across both groups, children with higher versus lower social competence skills recalled more semantic features about the referent in the gaze condition. We discuss how these findings add to our theoretical understanding of how gaze supports word learning.

中文翻译：

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在注视下学习单词的调查：来自典型发育或自闭症谱系障碍的学龄儿童的证据

摘要 关于儿童在学习新单词时如何注意注视和从注视中学习，以及注视是否赋予单词映射之外的任何好处，人们知之甚少。我们检查了 6 至 11 岁的正常发育儿童（n = 43）和患有自闭症谱系障碍的儿童（n = 25）是否以不同于另一种方向提示（箭头提示）的目光注视和学习。眼动仪记录了孩子们对视频的注意力，同时他们通过凝视提示或箭头提示学习新词。视频包括静止的物体或被操纵以演示物体功能的物体。视频学习后立即测量单词学习，一周后测量。与箭头提示相反，两组儿童在凝视提示上看的时间更长，从凝视提示到所指对象的眼神更多。探索性分析表明，在两组中，具有较高和较低社交能力技能的儿童在凝视条件下回忆起有关所指对象的更多语义特征。我们讨论这些发现如何增加我们对凝视如何支持单词学习的理论理解。