The eyes have it: infant gaze as an indicator of hunger and satiation

Infant gaze serves as a measure of attention to food cues in adults and children and may play a role in signalling infant hunger and satiation. Maternal responsiveness to infant satiation cues, including gaze, supports healthy appetite development and may reduce obesity risk. However, mothers often experience difficulty in interpreting feeding cues, and there have been few attempts to study cues systematically. This study aimed to develop a reliable coding scheme for categorising and tracking infant gaze behaviours during complementary feeding (CF). Twenty infants aged between six and eighteen months were filmed during typical meals on two occasions at home. The Infant Gaze at Mealtime (IGM) coding scheme was devised from the analysis of a sample of videos, a piloting and testing process, and the feeding cues and developmental psychology literature. Inter and intra-rater reliability tests of the scheme with 20% of the study videos revealed high levels of reliability. When applied to the full sample of 225 video clips, the IGM coding scheme revealed a significant decrease over time in the frequency of infants gazing at food and a significant increase in exploratory gaze behaviour within a meal. These changes were consistent across main and dessert courses, suggesting they may be indicative of changes in infant feeding state. The results suggest that infant gaze may offer a means of identifying infant hunger and satiation and, as an easily observed behaviour, an effective tool for mothers and professionals for promoting responsive feeding.