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Doherty, Martin J. 
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4314-7892 and Anderson, James R.
(1999)
A new look at gaze: Preschool children's understanding of eye-direction.
Cognitive Development, 14 (4).
pp. 549-571.
ISSN 0885-2014
Abstract
This study challenges the consensus view that children can judge what someone is looking at from infancy. In the first experiment 2-, 3-, and 4-year-old children were asked to judge what a person in a drawing was looking at and which of two people was "looking at" them. Only 6% of 2-year-olds and young 3-year-olds passed both gaze-direction tasks, but over 70% passed an analogous point-direction task. Most older 3-year-olds and 4-year-olds passed all three tasks. Experiment 2 compared children's ability to judge what the experimenter was looking at with performance on the picture tasks. Three-year-olds performed significantly worse than 4-year-olds on the real life and picture gaze tasks. Performances on the two types of gaze task were highly correlated. Experiment 3 included stimuli with the additional cue of head-direction. Even the younger children performed well on these stimuli. These results suggest that, regardless of task format, children cannot judge what someone is looking at from eye-direction alone until the age of 3 years. Weaknesses in the evidence supporting the consensus view are highlighted and discussed.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Faculty \ School: | Faculty of Social Sciences > School of Psychology |
| UEA Research Groups: | Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Research Groups > UEA Experimental Philosophy Group Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Groups > Developmental Science |
| Related URLs: | |
| Depositing User: | Pure Connector |
| Date Deposited: | 29 Oct 2015 12:01 |
| Last Modified: | 20 Jun 2023 10:30 |
| URI: | https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/54884 |
| DOI: | 10.1016/s0885-2014(99)00019-2 |
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