The rapid development of explicit gaze judgment ability at 3 years

Area of Science:

• Developmental Psychology
• Cognitive Science
• Neuroscience

Background:

• Understanding others' attention is crucial for social interaction.
• Gaze following, an earlier skill, involves orienting towards where another person is looking.
• The development of explicit gaze judgment, understanding the target of another's gaze, is less understood.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the developmental trajectory of explicit gaze judgment in young children.
• To determine the age at which children can accurately judge another person's gaze direction.
• To explore the relationship between gaze judgment and gaze following abilities.

Main Methods:

• Study 1: 54 children (2-4 years) judged gaze in real-life, photo, and drawing formats.
• Study 2: 76 children (3-6 years) and 15 adults performed fine-grained gaze judgment tasks with varying degrees of eye and head turn.
• Performance was assessed based on accuracy in identifying the target of another's gaze.

Main Results:

• A majority of children aged 3 and older could judge gaze direction, indicating emergence around age 3.
• Gaze judgment ability developed gradually from 3 to 6 years, approaching adult levels.
• Performance improved with larger gaze differences and congruent head turns, but 3-year-olds struggled even with head turns.

Conclusions:

• Explicit gaze judgment is a distinct ability that emerges around 3 years of age and develops gradually.
• This skill does not appear to develop directly from earlier gaze following abilities.
• Findings have implications for understanding the evolution and development of social cognition and attention.