Gaze following requires early visual experience.

ABSTRACT: Gaze understanding—a suggested precursor for understanding others’ intentions—requires recovery of gaze direction from the observed person's head and eye position. This challenging computation is naturally acquired at infancy without explicit external guidance, but can it be learned later if vision is extremely poor throughout early childhood? We addressed this question by studying gaze following in Ethiopian patients with early bilateral congenital cataracts diagnosed and treated by us only at late childhood. This sight restoration provided a unique opportunity to directly address basic issues on the roles of “nature” and “nurture” in development, as it caused a selective perturbation to the natural process, eliminating some gaze-direction cues while leaving others still available. Follow

SUBMITTER: Zohary E 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9171757 | biostudies-literature | 2022 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature