Kids Who Stare Away May Think Harder

Jan. 30, 2004 -- Kids who stare off into space may be paying more attention than you think.

The kibosh on the old parental warning to "look at me when I'm talking to you" comes from psychologist Gwyneth Doherty-Sneddon, PhD, and colleagues at the University of Stirling, Scotland, U.K.

Staring off into space -- "gaze aversion" -- certainly helps adults think. It helps us focus on mental tasks by shutting off distracting visual information and/or physical responses to other people. But adults in most cultures don't like it when kids do this. They think it means a child is showing a lack of interest or respect.

That's wrong, Doherty-Sneddon suggests in the February issue of The Psychologist.

"What our research clearly showed was that primary-school-aged children used gaze aversion to help them concentrate on difficult material," she writes. "Provided the aversion is appropriately timed ... it is something to be encouraged rather than discouraged."

Spacing Out: A Skill That Develops With Age

It's not really the same as spacing out. By the age of 8 years, kids stare off into space when trying to solve a verbal or arithmetic problem. Five-year-olds, however, only do this when working on verbal questions, not math.

"So gaze aversion in response to difficult questions is a skill that develops with age," Doherty-Sneddon writes. "The younger children generally looked at the questioner more. This suggests a higher reliance on visual cues at lower ages -- and perhaps an attempt to elicit help from the adult rather than work things out themselves."

Doherty-Sneddon suggests that a kid's ability use gaze aversion is a cue that can help teachers understand whether a child is ready to learn.

"We are only just beginning to understand the link between children's patterns of eye gaze and their cognition: There are many questions still to be addressed," she writes. "If we look long enough into space, perhaps we will fathom at least some of these.

SOURCE: Doherty-Sneddon, G. The Psychologist, February 2004; vol 17: pp 82-85.