Infants use eye contact with speakers to work out what to pay attention to and synchronise their brainwaves, helping them learn language, scientists in Cambridge and Singapore have shown. 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. Professor Victoria Leong and colleagues at the University of Cambridge, UK, and Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore, have previously shown that when an infant and adult make eye contact, their brainwaves synchronise with each other. Eye contact is one of the social signals that communicate intention to the listener. These may be particularly important in cultures where eye contact between a child and adult is less important – or even frowned upon, as it is in some Arabic countries.