The rapid development of explicit gaze judgment ability at 3 years

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 the ability arises around 3 years. Study 2 examined the fine-grained gaze judgment of 76 3- to 6-year-olds and 15 adults, using gaze differences of 10° and 15°. Development of gaze judgment was gradual, from chance at 3 years to near-adult level performance at 6 years. Although performance was better when a congruent head turn was included, 3-year-olds were still at chance on 10° head-turn trials. The findings suggest that the ability to explicitly judge gaze is novel at 3 years and develops slowly thereafter. It therefore does not develop out of earlier gaze-following. General implications for the evolution and development of gaze processing are discussed