Looking behavior and smiling in Down syndrome infants

We studied the relation between direction of gaze and smiling in 15 typical ly developing infants and 15 infants with Down syndrome. All of them were v ideotaped during face-to-face interaction with their mothers at home, and w hile having access to their familiar toys. Results showed that mothers in t he two groups behaved in a similar way; that Down syndrome infants looked a t their mother's face for longer than typically developing children; and th at the relationship between looking and smiling was similar in the two case s and reflected as an increase in the time the infant looked at its mother' s face and a decrease in the time the infant looked at toys. It was deduced that Down syndrome infants are capable of distinguishing the differential significance of faces and toys, so that, in the same way as typically devel oping infants, they direct their affective behavior fundamentally towards t he social element, which leads us to consider the affiliative function impl ied by this expression.