Children's use of triadic eye gaze information for "mind reading"

Five experiments examined children's use of eye gaze information for "mind-reading" purposes, specifically, for inferring another person's desire. When presented with static displays in the first 3 experiments, only by 4 years of age did children use another person's eye direction to infer desires, although younger children could identify the person's focus of attention. Further, 3-year-olds were capable of inferring desire from other nonverbal cues, such as pointing (Experiment 3). When eye gaze was presented dynamically with several other scaffolding cues (Experiment 4), 2- and 3-year-olds successfully used eye gaze for desire inference. Scaffolding cues were removed in Experiment 5, and 2- and 3-year-olds still performed above chance in using eye gaze. Results suggest that 2-year-olds are capable of using eye gaze alone to infer about another's desire. The authors propose that the acquisition of the ability to use attentional cues to infer another's mental state may involve both an association process and a differentiation process.