Juhl: Why are babies and toddlers so obsessed with your eyes?

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Eyes are windows – OH!

Eyeballs are the baby's favorite thing. Well, shake it off, it fits the bill. If you ask Krista Byers-Heinlein about it, she'll tell you it's pretty neat.

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Byers-Heinlein is a professor of psychology at Concordia, an infant development researcher, and the university's research chair in bilingualism and open science.

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“That's pretty neat, isn't it?” he says. “It's not something you should teach your child or your child. They are naturally drawn to the eye. There is a pattern of development.”

Babies are born able to recognize faces, and the eyes are one of the first cues they learn to read. They can interpret a very simple picture as a living thing, as long as there are eyes in the picture, says Byers-Heinlein. Given the options, they prefer to look at things with faces, especially eyes. It helps them understand what is going on in their world.

If eyes help us see what's alive, it could explain why adults do strange things like putting eyelashes on their headlights or saying “sorry” when they push a cleaning robot with a face.

This is one reason why toys and cartoon characters have big, wide eyes. There is recognition and attraction there.

“Face recognition in young babies is not as holistic as it is in adults,” he says. “We look at the whole page, but they look more at parts. Looking into each other's eyes, they say, “Oh, mom, is that dad? Babysitter? Is this someone I know or a stranger?' If you mask the rest of the face and look into the eyes, you can recognize people. Babies do it very well.”

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They learn to pick up cues from other people's eyes to look at their caregiver to determine whether to be afraid or curious when something happens. Before they realize what it means, they notice that someone is looking at them and not somewhere else.

Between six and nine months, they begin to engage in joint attention, learning to follow the gaze of another person.

“If the caregiver is marking something, the baby can orient to that and it tells them what the caregiver is talking about. If they can focus on one thing at a time, it's very important for learning.”

This piece of the puzzle can be disrupted in some children with neurodevelopmental challenges, such as when children with autism are less pleasing or disobedient to their caregivers. However, there is a developmental progression, and Byers-Heinlein cautions that immediate attention deficits are not diagnostic.

“If caregivers feel something is wrong, it's a good idea to talk to a doctor,” she says.

There's a difference when kids — especially moody kids — refuse to look you in the eye.

“It's kind of like someone saying, 'I don't want to be social with you right now because I'm mad or I'm sick or I need a moment.' It can be frustrating for parents, but I think it's very impressive in the sense that it's a complex behavior that they're showing.”

“You know, as humans, we know these things about other people,” says Byers-Heinlein, “even little people.”

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