Gaze cues facilitate incidental learning in children aged 7-10 years, but arrow cues do not.

Abstract

From infancy, humans use gaze cues from others to learn about their surrounding environment. It is known that gaze cues facilitate the cognitive processing of targets in both infants and adults, but what developmental changes occur during childhood? This study investigated the impact of gaze cueing on incidental learning in children aged 7-10 years (n = 80). Participants completed a cueing task where they were presented with gaze or arrow cues (valid or invalid) followed by a target stimulus. Then, participants conducted an incidental memory test including the target stimuli presented in the cueing task and novel stimuli. Results revealed that valid gaze cues significantly enhanced memory performance compared to arrow cues, while gaze cues and arrow cues had similar effects on attention orienting. This effect was consistent across age groups, suggesting that gaze cueing facilitates memory regardless of developmental stage. The findings support the socio-communicative aspect of gaze cues, which may influence cognitive facilitation in joint attentional situations in childhood. Joint attentional situations may be rewarding, influencing the motivation for implicit cognitive processing of objects that are the focus of attention. This study contributes to our understanding of spontaneous social cognition in children and underscores the importance of gaze cues in facilitating memory and learning in social contexts.