A child looks at his mother. The mother looks at the door. The child immediately knows that someone is coming. This ability is fundamental to our life together. We need to understand where others are looking and what they are paying attention to. Otherwise, neither conversations nor working together will work. But is this the same all over the world?
Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig and Leuphana University Lüneburg have investigated precisely this. They wanted to know whether children from different cultures process glances in the same way. To do this, they developed a simple game on a tablet. 1,377 children from 17 communities in 14 countries on five continents took part.
A balloon reveals the answer
The children played a "balloon game" on the touchscreen. A balloon flew behind a hedge. A drawn figure followed the balloon using only its eyes. The children had to tap on the spot on the hedge where they thought the balloon had landed. They only had the figure's eye movement as a clue. The researchers measured how far off the mark the children were. A computer-based model analyzed the data.
The result was clear. "Across all 17 communities, we see exactly the processing signature that our model predicts," says first author Manuel Bohn. The same basic pattern emerged everywhere. The further away the target was from the center of the screen, the less accurate the responses became. This suggests a common cognitive mechanism, i.e. a similar thought process in the brain.
Great differences between individual children
Older children performed better than younger children in all communities. But the individual differences were large. Some four-year-olds were more accurate than significantly older children. The differences between individual children were more significant than the average differences between the communities. "The fact that we were able to identify a common process despite differences in accuracy brings us closer to identifying true cognitive universals," explains senior author Daniel Haun.
A clear influence was seen with digital devices. Children who had access to touchscreens at home solved the task more accurately. This was true regardless of their environment. "The experience with the device improves accuracy, but does not change the cognitive processing itself," says co-author Julia Prein. The exercise therefore only helped with the implementation, not with the thinking itself.
The researchers adapted all visual and auditory elements of the task to the respective cultures. They worked closely with local partners. This enabled them to respectfully involve the communities and still make scientific comparisons. The study provides clear evidence that children around the world use similar cognitive processes to understand gaze directions.
Original publication:
Manuel Bohn et al.
A universal of human social cognition: Children from 17 communities process gaze in similar ways
Child Development, 23 January 2026
