Eye contact helps infants ‘tune in’ to speaker’s brainwaves and learn language

Eye contact helps infants ‘tune in’ to speaker’s brainwaves and learn language Craig Brierley Tue, 07/28/2026 - 10:00 Infants are surrounded by a vast range of stimuli that compete for their attention – sights, sounds, voices – and must somehow work out which things are worth paying attention to and learning from. To do this, they often rely on social cues – eye contact, ‘baby speak’ or someone calling their name, for example – but how this helps with learning is not clear. Professor Victoria Leong and colleagues at the University of Cambridge, UK, and Nanyang Technological University (NTU), S