Conceptual priors drive development of predictive attention to emotion.

Abstract

Emotion inference is not purely reactive but is supported by conceptual priors that contribute to active sampling of meaningful cues as social events unfold, yet how children learn to anticipate when and where such cues will emerge remains unclear. This study examined whether conceptual emotion knowledge serves as a prior supporting developmental increase in anticipatory attention, and whether such attention facilitates more adult-like emotion inferences. Children aged 5-11 years (N = 180, Mage = 8.02 years, 84 female; data collected 2024-2025) from China viewed videos while eye movements were simultaneously recorded and continuously rated the target character's emotion on a valence-arousal grid. Anticipatory attention was indexed by the extent to which children's saccades were directed toward regions about to contain meaningful information. Conceptual emotion knowledge was assessed with a composite that combined emotion granularity, diversity, and performance on a standardized emotion understanding test. Multilevel, moderated mediation models revealed that conceptual emotion knowledge mediated age-related increases in anticipatory saccades toward meaningful regions, which in turn predicted more adult-like emotion judgments. Together, these findings suggest that conceptual knowledge acts as a developmental mechanism bridging children's prior experience and growing attentional strategies, enabling more mature emotion understanding in social environments.