Kids ignoring adults, and adults ignoring kids: An own-age face bias in attentional gaze cueing

摘要

Comparable to the other-race effect, an other-age effect exists in which adults and children exhibit improved recognition performance with own-age compared to other-age faces. The scope of the other-age effect however has not been explored. To examine whether an own-age bias influences attentional processes, we designed a gaze cueing task using adultsa?? and childrena??s faces that validly, invalidly or neutrally cued subjects to the onset of a target. Stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs) of 115ms or 345ms after the gaze cue were used to compare the time course of gaze cueing effects. Two groups, children and adults, completed the task with non-predictive gaze stimuli to test the hypothesis that participants would be more effectively cued by own-age faces. At the 115ms SOA, children demonstrated an interaction between face-type and gaze validity. Their difference in RTs between invalid and valid trials for childrena??s faces was three times larger than the same difference for adultsa?? faces. Adult participants exhibited the reverse effect at the 115ms SOA. Their difference in RTs between invalid and valid trials for adult faces was three times larger than the difference for childrena??s faces. At the 345ms SOA, RTs were significantly faster for valid than invalid trials, but the age of the face had no effect in either group. These results demonstrate that own- and other-age faces differentially engage attentional mechanisms with a bias toward faces that are more socially relevant.