title: The rapid development of explicit gaze judgment ability at 3 years.
abstract: Two studies examined development of the ability to judge what another person is looking at. In Study 1, 54 2- to 4-year-olds judged where someone was looking in real-life, photograph, and drawing formats. A minority of 2-year-olds, but a majority of older children, passed all tasks, suggesting that the ability arises at around 3 years of age. Study 2 examined the fine-grained gaze judgment of 76 3- to 6-year-olds and 15 adults using gaze differences of 10 degrees and 15 degrees . Development of gaze judgment was gradual, from chance at 3 years of age to near adult-level performance at 6 years of age. Although performance was better when a congruent head turn was included, 3-year-olds were still at chance on 10 degrees head turn trials. The findings suggest that the ability to explicitly judge gaze is novel at 3 years of age and develops slowly thereafter. Therefore, the ability does not develop out of earlier gaze following. General implications for the evolution and development of gaze processing are discussed.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Stirling, Stirling FK9 4LA, UK. m.j.doherty@stir.ac.uk
authors.forename: Martin J
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Doherty
authors.forename: James R
authors.initials: JR
authors.lastname: Anderson
authors.forename: Lynne
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Howieson
mesh_terms: D001076:Aptitude; D001288:Attention; D002657:Child Development; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003210:Concept Formation; D004192:Discrimination, Psychological; D005133:Eye Movements; D005260:Female; D005403:Fixation, Ocular; D019416:Head Movements; D006801:Humans; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D007600:Judgment; D008297:Male; D009949:Orientation; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D018187:Personal Construct Theory