Adolescents Pay More Attention to Gaze than Children and Adults

Gaze could induce automatic orienting and plays a crucial role in social cognition. The goal of this study was to explore whether the effect of gaze induced orienting varies from children to adults. Three groups of participants were recruited: twenty-two 9- to 10-year-old children (average 9.5), twenty-three 13- to 16-year-old adolescents (average 14.5), and twenty 19- to 23-year-old adults (average 20.2). The participants located a target, while a schematic face was presented next to the target. The face gazed at (valid) or away from (invalid) the target on equal possibility. The gaze cue was presented 200, 1200, or 2400 ms before the onset of the target. Results of adults replicated previous findings that observers responded faster for valid targets than invalid targets (cue effect) at 200 ms interval, and slower at 2400 ms (inhibition of return, IOR), while no effect at 1200 ms. However, children showed cue effect only at 200 ms, while adolescents showed cue effect at 200 and 1200 ms, and IOR at 2400 ms. Thus, adolescents were more attracted by gazes, while children did not show inhibition mechanism of orienting to gazes. Our data thus demonstrated a developmental trend of automatic orienting to gazes.