Tracking developmental differences in real-world social attention across adolescence, young adulthood and older adulthood

TY - JOUR

T1 - Tracking developmental differences in real-world social attention across adolescence, young adulthood and older adulthood

AU - De Lillo, Martina

AU - Foley, Rebecca

AU - Fysh, Matthew C.

AU - Stimson, Aimée

AU - Bradford, Elisabeth E. F.

AU - Woodrow-Hill, Camilla

AU - Ferguson, Heather J.

N1 - Funding Information: This work was carried out with the support of a European Research Council grant to H.J.F. (CogSoCoAGE; 636458). The preregistration, datasets and code supporting this Article are available at the Open Science Framework (https://osf.io/fnd8h/). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish or preparation of the manuscript. Publisher Copyright: © 2021, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited.

PY - 2021/10

Y1 - 2021/10

N2 - Detecting and responding appropriately to social information in one's environment is a vital part of everyday social interactions. Here, we report two preregistered experiments that examine how social attention develops across the lifespan, comparing adolescents (10-19 years old), young (20-40 years old) and older (60-80 years old) adults. In two real-world tasks, participants were immersed in different social interaction situations-a face-to-face conversation and navigating an environment-and their attention to social and non-social content was recorded using eye-tracking glasses. The results revealed that, compared with young adults, adolescents and older adults attended less to social information (that is, the face) during face-to-face conversation, and to people when navigating the real world. Thus, we provide evidence that real-world social attention undergoes age-related change, and these developmental differences might be a key mechanism that influences theory of mind among adolescents and older adults, with potential implications for predicting successful social interactions in daily life.

AB - Detecting and responding appropriately to social information in one's environment is a vital part of everyday social interactions. Here, we report two preregistered experiments that examine how social attention develops across the lifespan, comparing adolescents (10-19 years old), young (20-40 years old) and older (60-80 years old) adults. In two real-world tasks, participants were immersed in different social interaction situations-a face-to-face conversation and navigating an environment-and their attention to social and non-social content was recorded using eye-tracking glasses. The results revealed that, compared with young adults, adolescents and older adults attended less to social information (that is, the face) during face-to-face conversation, and to people when navigating the real world. Thus, we provide evidence that real-world social attention undergoes age-related change, and these developmental differences might be a key mechanism that influences theory of mind among adolescents and older adults, with potential implications for predicting successful social interactions in daily life.

KW - Developmental studies

KW - Human behaviour

KW - Psychology

UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/85105803468

U2 - 10.1038/s41562-021-01113-9

DO - 10.1038/s41562-021-01113-9

M3 - Article

C2 - 33986520

SN - 2397-3374

VL - 5

SP - 1381

EP - 1390

JO - Nature Human Behaviour

JF - Nature Human Behaviour

ER -