Face to face with your baby and the importance of eye contact

Your baby’s vision when they were born was quite blurred and they focused best on objects around 20 to 30cm away. You might also have found that they've shown a preference for high contrast patterns, and have been interested in looking at faces.^[1] As they are beginning to gain greater control of their head and eye movements, you might see that your baby looks at your face more intently.  

The importance of faces 

Your baby will have been interested in faces since birth, and they will have recognised the people that they see frequently quite soon after they were born.^[1] But as they gain control of the movement of their eyes and head they will begin to look at your face as you move when you are close to them.^[2]  

Watching people helps your baby to build relationships, and as their vision develops they will watch your expressions and begin to learn about emotions. They will also begin to understand interactions through watching you as you interact with each other.  

Researchers have found that babies tend to prefer faces that are looking at them, so they look more when someone makes eye contact than when they are looking away.^[3] As your baby looks at you, you might notice that they start to make eye contact, and this is likely to be in response to you looking at them at first. Making eye contact will support their language development as eye contact and looking at the same object supports communication.^[4]   

Your baby's vision will continue to develop

Soon they will be able to watch you when you are a little further away.^[2] They will also be able to look at objects and, as their social and language skills develop, find ways to share what interests them with you so that sometimes you watch the same things at the same time.  

References:

[1] Byrne, E (2021) How to build a human. What science knows about childhood. London: Souvenir Press. 

[2] Sheridan, M., Sharma, A and Cockerill, H. (2014). Mary Sheridan’s from birth to five years. Children’s developmental progress. (4th edn.). Abingdon: Routledge. 

[3] Johnson MH, Senju A, Tomalski P. (2015) The two-process theory of face processing: modifications based on two decades of data from infants and adults. Neuroscience Biobehavioral Reviews. 50 pp169-179.  

[4] Gotzke, C. & Sample Gosse, H. (2007). Research Review: Interacting 0 - 3 Months. In L.M. Phillips (Ed.), Handbook of language and literacy development: A Roadmap from 0 - 60 Months. [online], pp. 1 - 8. London, ON: Canadian Language and Literacy Research Network. Available at: Handbook of language and literacy development