Variation in gaze following across the life span: A process-level perspective

Area of Science:

• Developmental psychology
• Cognitive neuroscience
• Social cognition

Background:

• Gaze following is crucial for social-cognitive abilities like inferring knowledge.
• Previous research focused on group-level development in infancy, with limited understanding of later development and individual differences.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the developmental trajectory of gaze following across the lifespan.
• To explore the sources of individual differences in gaze following using a computational model.
• To examine the relationship between gaze following, vector following, and perspective-taking.

Main Methods:

• Study 1: Cross-sectional study of gaze following performance in 3- to 80-year-olds (N=718).
• Study 2: Development of a computational cognitive model to explain individual differences in gaze following (N=110).
• Study 3: Correlational study examining gaze following with vector following and Theory of Mind tasks in children (N=102).

Main Results:

• Gaze following performance improved significantly from preschool years and remained stable into adulthood, with a slight decline in old age.
• A computational model successfully explained individual differences by modeling gaze following as the estimation of pupil angles and gaze vectors.
• Gaze following correlated with non-social vector following and Level 2 perspective-taking, but not other Theory of Mind tasks.

Conclusions:

• Gaze following demonstrates a protracted developmental course beyond infancy, with age-related changes in precision.
• Individual differences in gaze following can be meaningfully explained by a computational model of visual perception.
• Gaze following is linked to specific social-cognitive skills like perspective-taking and non-social spatial reasoning, highlighting the interplay of core cognitive processes.