The effects of social and symbolic cues on visual search in children

Studies comparing the effects of social and symbolic cues have typically presented these cues in isolation and in the centre of the display. During day-to-day viewing, however, cues are unlikely to appear in isolation or directly at fixation. Recent studies in adults have suggested that the effects of cues presented away from fixation rely less on their biological relevance and more on their visual properties. Previous studies have all been conducted in adults, but it is unclear whether children, who may be more strongly biased towards biological cues, show the same pattern of results. We tested 115 children aged 3-10 years old using a cued visual search task. The results showed that children are indeed more sensitive to the biological relevance of the cues, with particularly strong cueing of search targets by pairs of eyes and pointing hands in the youngest children.