Towards dynamical modeling of infants’ looking times

Analyzing looking times is among the most important behavioral approaches to studying problems suchas infant cognition, perception, or language development. However, processed-based approaches to the dynamics of infants’ looking times are lacking. Here, we propose and analyze a dynamical model of infant gaze behavior with full account of the microstructure (i.e., saccades and fixations). Our process-based model is illustrated by reproducing inter-individual differences in a developmental study of noun comprehension (Garrison et al., 2020). In our modeling framework, numerical values of model parameters map onto specific cognitive processes (e.g., attention or working memory) involved in gaze control. Because of the general architecture of the mathematical model and our robust procedures in model inference via Bayesian data assimilation, our framework may find applications in other fields of developmental and cognitive sciences.