📅 July 2026 – The “See Me Talk” project crossed the Atlantic this time, travelling to ICIS Conference, in Panama!
The International Congress of Infant Studies (ICIS) is the biggest one in developmental science!
There, we presented the final findings from the ‘See Me Talk’ project (SONATINA, NCN; PI: Dr Itziar Lozano), investigating whether there are sex differences in infants’ mouth-looking to talking faces during the first year of life, and whether mouth-looking shows female-specific associations with later language and autistic traits across three international cohorts of infant siblings of older autistic children (UK, Italy, and Sweden), using both screen-based and live eye-tracking. If so, mouth-looking could represent an early mechanism contributing to sex differences in language development and autism.
Key findings:
👶 Contrary to our predictions, we found no evidence for sex differences in infants’ mouth-looking during the first year of life across the three cohorts, timepoints, or contexts (screen-based vs. live eye-tracking).
🗣️ Unlike expected, only male infants at elevated likelihood for autism (but not females) showed an association between reduced mouth-looking at 8–10 months and higher concurrent receptive language across the UK and Italian cohorts. Females also outperformed males on all vocabulary measures in toddlerhood. In light of previous findings in neurotypical infants, these results suggest that early mouth-looking may be a marker of later language development in both sexes, but at different developmental timepoints of the first year—earlier in females and later in males.
👄 In the live eye-tracking task, greater mouth-looking at 10 months predicted higher socio-communicative differences and autistic traits at 24 months in infants at elevated likelihood for autism, regardless of sex.
These findings highlight how sex, cohort, testing context, and developmental time jointly shape the links between early visual attention to the mouth of talking faces and later language and socio-communicative outcomes.
Many thanks to all collaborators involved in the See Me Talk project from Uppsala University, Birkbeck-University of London, East Anglia University, and Scientific Institute E. MEDEA, including Valentina Riva, Charlotte Viktorsson, Elena Capelli, Emily Jones, Teea Gliga, Terje Falck-Ytter, Przemysław Tomalski, Anna Duszyk-Bogorodzka, all participating families, and the National Science Centre (NCN) for funding this work.
📅 April 2026 – The “See Me Talk” project travelled to INSAR Conference, Prague, where our work was awared a “Top-Rated Abstract”!
The “See Me Talk” project has travelled to the International Society for Autism Research (INSAR) in Prague. It has been my first time attending, and an incredibly rewarding experience!
Beyond engaging with high-quality autism science and researchers, what stood out most was the truly multidisciplinary environment and the presence of neurodiversity across the community.
Our work, hosted at Babylab IP PAN, explores whether there are sex differences in early mouth-looking in response to a talking face, and whether there is a female-specific association between mouth-looking in the first year of life and later language development and autistic traits.
We investigate this using large existing datasets of infants at both elevated and typical likelihood of autism, examining attentional patterns across contexts (screen-based and ‘live’ eye-tracking) and across sites (Italy, Sweden, and the UK).
A big thank you to all my co-authors and to everyone who stopped by to engage with our work!
📅 January – July 2025 – Research Visit at DiVE Lab (Uppsala University) within the “See Me Talk” project!
This innovative method tracks infants’ gaze to speaking faces in real-time during real-life interactions—an important step in understanding how infants learn from everyday social experiences. The DiVE Lab (Development and Neurodiversity Lab) at Uppsala University, led by Prof. Terje Falck-Yytter, explores early child development through large-scale research. Clinical projects like EASE and PIP examine early developmental pathways in autism and ADHD to improve early diagnosis and personalized support for children and their families. The team also runs twin studies to understand how genetic and environmental factors shape brain development and behavior.
📅 August 2025 📍 LCICD 2025 – Lancaster Conference in Infant and Early Child Development at Lancaster (UK)
We participated in the 9th Lancaster International Conference on Infant and Early Child Development (LCICD 2025), held at Lancaster University (UK) from 27–29 August 2025. The conference brought together more than 130 international researchers working on infant and early childhood development, covering topics from prenatal development to early cognitive, language, and social development.
LCICD is known for its collaborative and welcoming atmosphere, providing a platform for researchers at all career stages to present new findings, exchange ideas, and discuss emerging directions in developmental science.
During the conference, we presented the oral talk “Early selective attention to the mouth of a talking face in the first year of life as a potential female-specific marker of better language development in autism” from the See Me Talk project. The conference provided a valuable opportunity to share our findings and discuss them with researchers working on infant development and autism. It was also a great opportunity for Dr. Teodora Gliga and me to meet in person her Gliga’s Lab team and spend time together!
📅 October 2024 – Short Research Visit to IRCSS MEDEA Autism Babylab (Lecco, Italy)
It was also an immense pleasure for me to stay a few more days for a short research visit Dr Valentina Riva and Elena Capelli at the IRCCS Medea Autism Babylab. MEDEA Babylab’s team is not only scientifically exceptional but also incredibly welcoming! Our time working together has been highly productive, transferring their large longitudinal dataset to us, which advanced our ongoing collaboration on the “See Me Talk” SONATINA project! We also had time to make an ‘aperitivo’ close to the Lake. Thank you all the MEDEA team members for your generosity in those days at your lab!
📅 October 2024, Autism Conference at Lecco (Italy), organised by Dr Valentina Riva
I had the great pleasure of taking part in the conference on “Individual Differences in Autism in the Early Years” organised by Dr. Valentina Riva with IRCCS Medea – La Nostra Famiglia and Univerlecco. I was honoured to attend the event as an invited speaker.
This outstanding conference celebrated at Lecco (Italy) brought together leading international researchers working on early autism and developmental differences. It was an excellent opportunity for collaboration and scientific discussion around individual variability in early development, and for discuss new directions in the autism field. Also, it was a fantastic opportunity to meet and share research with leading international experts in the field of autism, including Valentina Riva, Giorgia Bussu, Valeria Giovanni, Anna Gui, Michael Lombardo and Giacomo Vivanti. The insightful discussions, expertly moderated by Maria Luisa Scattoni and Serafino Corti, were invaluable. Many attendees drew parallels between this conference and INSAR!
More about the conference clicking here.
📅 July, 2024 – ICIS Symposium (Glasgow)
At ICIS 2024 (Glasgow, UK, 8–11 July 2024), we organised the symposium “Visual Traces on Audiovisual Speech in the First Two Years of Life: Towards a Converging Developmental Picture”>, bringing together Dr. Charlotte Viktorsson (Uppsala University), Prof. Teodora Gliga (University of East Anglia), Dr. Magdalena Szmytke, Dr. Itziar Lozano Sánchez (Polish Academy of Sciences), and Elena Capelli (IRCCS E. Medea). Several of the speakers are also involved in the “See Me Talk” project, which added an important developmental dimension to the symposium.
Our symposium focused on how infants’ attention to audiovisual speech develops across the first two years of life and why previous findings in the field have often been difficult to reconcile. Across the three talks, we explored what exactly drives infants’ increasing attention to the mouth of a talking face, how this behaviour can be measured more sensitively beyond infancy using EEG measures, and how attention to talking faces relates to audiovisual speech processing in neurodivergent development (autism). Together, the presentations showed that growing attention to the mouth is specifically linked to visual speech and to perceptual processing, helping to build a more coherent developmental picture of how infants learn from talking faces.
We would like to thank our team member(s) Prof. Teodora Gliga for serving as the Discussant and Dr. Charlotte Viktorsson for Chairing the symposium!
Prof. Teodora Gliga (Head of Gliga’s Lab) – she was our Discussant!
Dr. Charlotte Viktorsson, Researcher at DiVE Lab (Uppsala University) – she was our Chair!