The Observing Infant: Eye-Tracking Insights into Early Cognitive and Social Development
A special issue of Journal of Eye Movement Research (ISSN 1995-8692).
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 20 January 2027 | Viewed by 9
Editors
Interests: infant eye tracking; visual attention in infancy; social attention development; early cognitive development; gaze processing; face and emotion perception; learning in naturalistic contexts; caregiver–infant interaction; neurodevelopmental trajectories; developmental methods and analytics
Interests: infant eye tracking; visual attention; language acquisition; social interaction; parent–infant interaction; multimodal learning; naturalistic behavior; computational modeling
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Eye-tracking technology has become a central tool in infancy research, generating rich, fine-grained spatiotemporal data on gaze, attention, and visual exploration. These data provide unique access to the mechanisms underlying early cognitive and social development, enabling researchers to examine how infants engage with faces, objects, and dynamic environments in real time. At the same time, the increasing availability of advanced analytic approaches, experimental paradigms, and ecologically valid recording methods expands the range of questions that can be addressed using eye tracking.
In this Special Issue, “The Observing Infant: Eye-Tracking Insights into Early Cognitive and Social Development”, we invite contributions that leverage eye-tracking methodologies to investigate foundational processes in infancy. We welcome empirical, methodological, and theoretical work examining topics such as social attention, learning and memory, language development, and early markers of neurodevelopmental divergence. Submissions incorporating innovative approaches—including longitudinal designs, naturalistic or mobile eye tracking, computational modeling, and multimodal integration—are particularly encouraged.
We also invite work that advances methodological rigor, including new analytic techniques, reproducibility practices, and validation studies. By bringing together diverse perspectives and approaches, this Special Issue aims to highlight how eye tracking can deepen our understanding of early development and inform future directions in developmental science.
Dr. Angelina Vernetti
Prof. Dr. Chen Yu
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
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Keywords
- eye tracking
- infancy
- visual attention
- social cognition
- early learning
- gaze analysis
- developmental methods
- neurodevelopmental risk
- naturalistic paradigms
- computational modeling
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