Humans are social animals. In our evolution, we’ve developed the ability to deduce what another person might be thinking, when they do or say something, and to predict their behavior based on that deduction. Communication that passes between two people goes beyond a simple understanding of the words that are exchanged. Infants begin to pick up non-verbal signals well before they have learned to speak.
From the age of about four months, babies learn to look at other people’s eyes to figure out what their intentions might be. Even from the age of two months, infants look longer at the eyes than at any other part of a face. To most animals, direct eye contact is considered threatening; to humans, a look can also send a friendly, affectionate signal.
From about the end of the first year of life, babies learn to infer from the direction of an adult’s gaze what the adult is looking at or thinking about. This is something other animals, with the possible exception of some primates, do not do. Babies also learn, by about the same age, to direct the attention of an adult to an object, by moving their eyes between the object and the adult’s eyes, as well as by pointing.
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