Infant Sex Effect on Naturally Occurring Attention Behaviors During Interactive Object Play

Visual attention plays a critical role in human learning, such as social, cognitive, and language development, though reported individual variation exists. Specifically, prevailing sex differences in attention behaviors have been documented throughout childhood and adulthood. However, we know relatively little about what experiences or processes through which individual differences, such as sex differences, may emerge and how parental behaviors may shape them. The present study captured infant and parent attention experiences within a social interactive play context to test the effect of infant sex. Results suggest that while male infants and their parents showed frequent attention shifts between regions of interest (e.g., hands, face, and objects) compared to the female infants and their parents, parents of female infants experienced longer attention to objects and parent-female dyads experienced longer moments of joint attention. These findings indicate the early emergence and rapidly changing characteristics of infant sex differences in visual attention and that parents may modify their attention behaviors to their infant's sex during play.