Face-Looking as a Real-Time Process in Mind-Mindedness: Timely Coordination Between Mothers' Gaze on Infants' Faces and Mind-Related Comments.

ABSTRACT: Maternal mind-mindedness refers to a caregiver's tendency to respond to their infants as individuals with their own thoughts, feelings, desires, and beliefs. Although previous studies have focused on maternal speech in quantifying mind-mindedness, maternal mind-mindedness should manifest not only as mind-related comments but also through non-verbal behaviors during infant-mother interactions. In this study, we investigated the relationship between maternal gaze at the infant's face and typical verbal measurement of mind-mindedness in free-flowing interactions. Forty 11- to 13-month-old infants and their mothers participated in the study; the mothers were asked to wear a head-mounted eye tracker to measure their gaze during infant-mother free-play interactions. We measured the proportion of

SUBMITTER: Yamamoto H 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11608580 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Jan-Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature