Gaze cues in mother-child dyads Heather Bell and Meredith Meyer University of Oregon INTRODUCTION RESULTS CONCLUSIONS METHODS REFERENCES ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS FUTURE DIRECTIONS Example of parent gazing at picture: Example of parent gazing at child: Example of hand drawn pictures that mother-child dyads discussed: UtteranceCode Because cats like to play with yarnGeneric Where do kangaroos live?Generic But birds, they don’t, their tongues don’t come out Generic What do kangaroos do?Generic Who rides on a school busGeneric Where’s the airplane flying to?Particular It looks like it’s cleaning his feathersParticular I don’t think he’s dirtyParticular It’s a lampLabel What is that thing?Label Those are sealsLabel Oh it’s a sprinklerLabel YeahOther Sort of unusualOther Right thereOther Mean proportions of gaze to child while saying utterance type (generic vs. particular) over total number of utterances of that type: Utterance and code examples: I would like to thank Meredith Meyer for her assistance in writing, data collection, and overall support in completing this project. The author also wishes to thank Dare A. Baldwin for her assistance in advising and contributing to this project. Cimpian, A. & Markman, E.M. (2008). Preschool children’s use of cues to generic meaning. Cognition, 107, Gelman, S. A. & Raman, L. (2003). Preschool children use linguistic form class and pragmatic cues to interpret generics. Child Development, 74, A future study may entail investigating whether there is a match in gaze between mothers and children by coding whether preschoolers look up to see the change in their mothers gazing direction.  If children are “matching” their mother’s eye gaze by looking back at her while she is saying these generic noun phrase utterances then this would suggest that they are picking up on the gaze cues she is giving them. Another future study would be to investigate whether children are sensitive to gaze as a cue for disambiguating generic noun phrases from particular utterances and whether they are utilizing it. This study would be set up similarly to Cimpian and Markman’s (2008) study.  Children would be shown a picture of two animals (e.g., two dogs).  The experimenter would then say “They like to X” (e.g., They like to eat berries) while either looking at the child or while looking at the picture.  The experimenter would then ask the child the test question of “Who Xs”. The study would be run on the same age group of three-to-five-year-olds.  The prediction would be that if children were utilizing gaze as cue for generic noun phrases they would give a generic answer when the experimenter gazed at them while giving them the information and a particular answer when the experimenter gazed at the picture while giving them the information. Participants Three and four-year-old children that heard primarily English at home and had no known language or cognitive delays completed the study. The final sample of children consisted of twelve three-year-olds (M = months, SD = 2.54) and nine four-year-olds (M = months, SD = 4.01). Stimuli The pictures in the study were hand drawn and child-friendly. They were created specifically for this study. Half of the pictures were of common objects and the other half were of common animals; twelve pictures all together. Procedure Mothers discussed the hand drawn pictures with their children The only instruction mothers were given was to go through the pictures with their children the way they would a picture book at home. All sessions were taped via a closed-circuit camera system. Speech Coding Utterances were classified as particular, generic, labeling, and other, and such coding was done blind to visual access to the mother-child dialogue. Gaze Coding Gaze direction was classified as child (mother gazing towards her child), paper (mother gazing towards the picture, or neither (mother gazing towards neither the picture nor her child, often seen when parents were switching pictures). Gaze towards the child, paper, or neither was considered to be when the mother looked at the target and it was clear that her gaze was focused on that target. A 2 (age: 3-year-old vs. 4-year-old) x 2 (language type: generic noun phrases vs. particular utterances) mixed within-between ANOVA will be used to analyze the prediction that gaze to the child is more frequent for generic utterances than for particular utterances. The proportion of gaze to child while saying a generic utterance to the total number of generic statements was done for each child; the proportions ranged from 0 to 1. The proportion of gaze to child while saying a particular utterance to the total number of particular statements was also done for each child; the proportions ranged from 0 to We performed a mixed within-between analysis of variance on these scores: Age (3-and-4-year-olds) was a between-subjects variable and language type (proportion of generic noun phrases and proportion of particular utterances) was a within-subjects variable. The average proportion of generic noun phrases in child gaze was higher (M =.44, SD =.35) than the average proportion of particular utterances in child gaze (M =.27, SD =.18). This effect was marginally significant, F(1,18) = 3.54, p =.076. The main effect of age was not significant, F(1,18) =.329, p =.573. The Age x Language type interaction was not significant, F(1, 18) = 1.62, p =.219. These results suggest the possibility that mothers are gazing at their children when saying generic noun phrases. Mothers may consciously recognize that the category as a whole to which they are referring is not represented by one or two individuals from the category, which is visually represented in front of them and therefore they look at the child.  However, it is unlikely that mothers are consciously utilizing gaze as a cue to communicate with their children that they are referring to something generic versus something non-generic. This study has implications beyond children’s comprehension of the broad scope of generic noun phrases. Generic noun phrases are used in expressing social kind categories which are the infrastructure of stereotypes.  Therefore when children are learning how to distinguish generic noun phrases they are also learning the intricacies of stereotypes. If we can understand how children learn generic noun phrases then we can understand more about how children learn and contribute to the continuation of stereotypes. This study provides evidence that mothers unconsciously or consciously use gaze as a cue for distinguishing generic noun phrases.  This suggests that gaze may function as a cue for differentiating generic from particular since mothers in this study changed their sight trajectory to look at their children when saying a generic noun phrase. Generic noun phrases (e.g., Dogs have four legs) refer to a category as a whole. This differs from other types of language such as particular utterances (e.g., That dog is black) or labeling (e.g., That’s a dog) because it denotes properties that are relatively essential and free of context (Gelman & Raman, 2003). Children as young as two utilize a variety of morphosyntactic and pragmatic cues to determine if an utterance is generic versus particular. Since children utilize these verbal cues, they may also utilize physical cues such as gaze or gesture to disambiguate whether a statement is generic or particular. Just as parents use these verbal cues unconsciously, we think parents would use gaze as a cue unconsciously. This study examined if gaze was given as a cue by mothers to their preschool age children in order to disambiguate generic noun phrases from particular utterances. Since generic language refers to an abstract concept my hypothesis is that parents would look at their children when saying a generic utterance. It would be misdirection for parents to look at the picture, book, or object they are discussing because they are not talking about that particular object but the category that is belongs to. Similarly I hypothesize that parents will look at the object referred to when saying a particular utterance.