Determining the meanings of words requires language learners to attend to what other people say. However, it behooves a young language learner to simultaneously encode relevant non‐verbal cues, for example, by following the direction of their eye gaze. Sensitivity to cues such as eye gaze might be particularly important for bilingual infants, as they encounter less consistency between words and objects than monolingual infants, and do not always have access to the same word‐learning heuristics (e.g., mutual exclusivity). In a preregistered study, we tested the hypothesis that bilingual experience would lead to a more pronounced ability to follow another's gaze. We used a gaze‐following paradigm developed by Senju and Csibra (Current Biology, 18, 2008, 668) to test a total of 93 6‐ to 9‐month‐old and 229 12‐ to 15‐month‐old monolingual and bilingual infants, in 11 laboratories located in 8 countries. Monolingual and bilingual infants showed similar gaze‐following abilities, and both groups showed age‐related improvements in speed, accuracy, frequency, and duration of fixations to congruent objects. Unexpectedly, bilinguals tended to make more frequent fixations to on‐screen objects, whether or not they were cued by the actor. These results suggest that gaze sensitivity is a fundamental aspect of development that is robust to variation in language exposure.

中文翻译：

---

单语和双语婴儿目光跟随的发展：一项多实验室研究


确定单词的含义需要语言学习者注意其他人所说的话。然而，年轻的语言学习者应该同时编码相关的非语言线索，例如，通过跟随他们的视线方向。对目光等线索的敏感性对于双语婴儿来说可能特别重要，因为他们比单语婴儿遇到的单词和物体之间的一致性较差，并且并不总是能够获得相同的单词学习启发法（例如，相互排斥）。在一项预先注册的研究中，我们测试了这样的假设：双语经验会导致更明显的跟随他人目光的能力。我们使用 Senju 和 Csibra 开发的注视跟随范式（Current Biology, 18, 2008, 668）测试了总共 93 名 6 至 9 个月大和 229 名 12 至 15 个月大的单语和双语婴儿，分布在 8 个国家的 11 个实验室。单语和双语婴儿表现出相似的注视跟随能力，并且两组在注视一致物体的速度、准确性、频率和持续时间方面都表现出与年龄相关的改善。出乎意料的是，双语者倾向于更频繁地注视屏幕上的物体，无论他们是否受到演员的暗示。这些结果表明，注视敏感性是发展的一个基本方面，对语言接触的变化具有鲁棒性。