Infants use eye contact with speakers to work out what to pay attention to and synchronise their brainwaves, helping them learn language, scientists have shown.

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.

The researchers have previously shown that when an infant and adult make eye contact, their brainwaves synchronise with each other.