The Dynamics of Caregiver Unpredictability Shape Moment-to-Moment Infant Looking During Dyadic Interaction

Cognitive development is associated with how predictable caregivers are, but themechanisms driving this are unclear. One possibility is caregiver predictability initially shapeshow infants gather information for learning. Here, caregiver-infant dyads (N=222, 2-6-months-old, all female caregivers) in South Africa and Malawi engaged in naturalistic play before theirinteractions were hand-annotated to measure caregiver predictability and infant gaze. In bothcountries, temporal variation in caregiver predictability shaped infant looking dynamics—infantsattended to specific sensory signals (η2=0.04), and specific timepoints (η2=0.10), that were usefulfor them based on their caregivers’ typical behavior. These findings provide a framework by whichthe predictability of caregiver behavior may shape fundamental, early optimization of visualattention for learning in infancy, and later cognitive development.