Sensitive responding to eye cues plays a key role in human social interactions. Pupil size provides subtle cues regarding a social interaction partner's arousal states. The current study assessed infants’ sensitivity to and preference for differences in pupil size. Specifically, we examined White 14‐month‐old infants’ pupillary responses when viewing own‐race and other‐race (Asian) eyes with dilating, constricting, and static medium‐sized pupils. Our results show that, independent of race, infants’ pupils dilated more when viewing eyes with dynamically changing (dilating and constricting) pupils than when viewing eyes with non‐changing, static, and medium‐sized pupils. We also measured infants’ looking preferences, showing that, independent of race, infants preferentially attended to eyes with dilated pupils. Moreover, our results show that infants orient more quickly to pupillary changes in own‐race eyes than in other‐race eyes. These findings demonstrate that infants detect, but do not mimic, changes in pupil size in others and show a preference for eyes with dilated pupils.

中文翻译：

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探究婴儿观察眼睛时对瞳孔大小的敏感性

对眼睛提示的敏感反应在人类社交互动中起着关键作用。瞳孔大小提供了关于社交互动伙伴的唤醒状态的微妙线索。目前的研究评估了婴儿对瞳孔大小差异的敏感性和偏好。具体来说，我们检查了 14 个月大的白人婴儿在用扩张、收缩和静止的中等大小瞳孔观看本种族和其他种族（亚洲）眼睛时的瞳孔反应。我们的结果表明，与种族无关，婴儿的瞳孔在观察动态变化（扩张和收缩）瞳孔的眼睛时比观察具有不变、静态和中等大小瞳孔的眼睛时放大得更多。我们还测量了婴儿的外观偏好，结果表明，与种族无关，婴儿优先注意瞳孔放大的眼睛。而且，我们的结果表明，与其他种族的眼睛相比，婴儿对本种族眼睛的瞳孔变化的定向更快。这些研究结果表明，婴儿可以检测到但不会模仿其他人瞳孔大小的变化，并且更喜欢瞳孔散大的眼睛。