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Children's ""mutuality demand"" in seeing, hearing, and speech

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Children's ""mutuality demand"" in seeing, hearing, and speech

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CHILDREN’S "MUTUALITY DEMAND” IN SEEING, HEARING, AND SPEECH

by

Allie Khalulyan

A Thesis Presented to the
DEPARTMENT OF PSYCHOLOGY
AND THE FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
MASTER OF ARTS
(PSYCHOLOGY)

August 2015

Graduate Student in Developmental Psychology

Allie Khalulyan

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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Corey Pettit for assistance with data collection, Devika Dhamija and
Sarfaraz Serang for help with data analysis, and Kidspace Children’s Museum for kindly
offering recruitment resources.

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Table of Contents

Acknowledgements 2
List of Figures 4
Abstract 5
Introduction 6
Method 15
Results 21
Discussion 22
References 35

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List of Figures

Figure 1: Study Visual Demonstration 1 14
Figure 2: Study Visual Demonstration 2 14
Figure 3: Study Stimuli 16
Figure 4: Study Aerial View 17
Figure 5: Graph of Results 22
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Abstract
Mutual gaze plays an important role in children’s judgments of person perception.
Previous studies show that when asked if they can see an agent whose eyes are occluded
(Flavell, Shipstead, & Croft, 1980; Moll, Arellano, Guzman, Cordova, & Madrigal, 2015;
Russell, Gee, & Bullard, 2012), children often give negative answers—indicating their
strong inclination toward mutual engagement. In this study, we explored if children’s
insistence on mutuality is limited to gaze or if they also demand it in the domain of vocal
communication (i.e., hearing and speech). N = 24 children (12 female) between two-and-
a-half and four years of age (M = 45.16 months) were asked if they could see, hear, and
speak to another person whose eyes, ears, and mouth were/was covered, respectively
(experimental condition). In a control condition, the same question was asked when the
corresponding facial area was uncovered. In all three modalities, children negated being
able to perceive or address another person when her facial areas (eyes, ears, mouth) were
covered than when these same areas were in plain view. The current study is the first to
demonstrate that children deny being able to hear or speak to another person who cannot
hear or speak to them. These findings strongly confirm children’s insistence on mutual
engagement, which they robustly manifest when seeing others.
Keywords: mutual engagement, intersubjectivity, person perception

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Children’s “Mutuality Demand” in Seeing, Hearing, and Speech
Introduction
In human social interactions, gaze functions as a powerful medium of nonverbal
communication. During early development, gaze facilitates respective forms of social
interaction: (1) Dyadic episodes, or nonverbal “dialogue” between infants and others;
and, (2) Triadic episodes, or shared attention between children and others toward objects
or events (Moll, Carpenter, & Tomasello, 2007). The importance of gaze is manifest in
other developmental phenomena as well. Previous studies have shown that children
between two and four years of age often deny that they can see another agent (i.e.,
persons or dolls) whose eyes are covered (Flavell et al., 1980; Moll et al., 2015; Russell
et al., 2012) or whose gaze is averted (Russell et al., 2012). The interpretation that
follows from these findings is that children demand mutual gaze (i.e., eye contact) in
order to affirm another’s visibility.
Effectively, this “mutuality demand” can be summed up as: “I can see you only if
you can see me [and vice versa].” Russell et al. (2012) deemed this mutuality demand a
developmental “growth error.” It is an error because children erroneously bypass their
own first-personal perspective in their judgments regarding others’ visibility. In doing so,
they wrongfully adopt the second-personal perspective as their own, i.e., “I cannot see
you because you cannot see me.” Therefore, the mutuality demand is a faulty form of
perspective-taking, one that cannot generate accurate and veridical conclusions about
children’s own perceptual experience. Furthermore, it is a growth error because of its
temporal confinement to the preschool years. By the age of five years or so, children
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correct their mistake and begin to provide adult-like answers, acknowledging the
visibility of others who do not simultaneously see or look back at them.
In contrast to claims that children are largely egocentric, their demand for
reciprocal engagement evidences that they are able to adopt the visual perspective of
others. However, this type of perspective-taking occurs at the expense of reporting
accurate and veridical responses. Around five years of age, children begin to provide
adult-like answers to questions of person perception. For older children and adults,
another’s visibility is tied to the visibility of the entire body, and not just a particular
facial area such as the eyes.
Research Background
Flavell et al. (1980) were among the first to investigate that children demand
mutual regard between two to four years of age and gradually “phase out” of this stage
around five years of age. This mutuality demand engages children in a conditional form
of perspective-taking: “If you cannot see me, then I cannot see you.” In some sense,
children’s mutualistic conceptions are constrained by second persons whereas older
children’s and adults’ rely on objective or “correct” personal accounts (i.e., “I can see
you irrespective of your visual experience”). In a series of experiments, Flavell et al.
(1980) tested the common assumption that children make egocentric inferences about the
perception of other people. Indeed, children provided egocentric and non-veridical
responses to the question “Do I see you?” when their own visual experience was
physically interrupted or in the absence of mutual gaze.
However, several control questions illustrated that children’s conceptions of the
self and other can take on a non-egocentric and veridical form. For example, they
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affirmed that another agent could see their arm, and an object placed in front of them, but
not their eyes and back. This study sheds light on the developmental trajectory of the
mutuality demand—in particular, children younger than five years of age treat mutual
gaze as a defining feature of their holistic conceptions of the self (“Can I see you?”) and
the other (“Can you see me?”). In contrast, for older children and adults, occluding the
eyes or any other single area of the face does not constrain their responses regarding self
and other visibility. Rather, these responses hinge on the visibility of the entire body.
Subsequently, McGuigan and Doherty (2006) posed several novel questions
regarding children’s mutuality demand. The area of occlusion in their study concerned
the entire head and not just the eyes. The investigators’ interests were two-fold: (1) Does
the orientation of an agent, whether it is upright versus upside-down, influence children’s
judgments of the visibility of others? (2) If children affirm the visibility of an agent
whose head is visible, do they also generalize these judgments to non-agents (e.g., figure-
shaped objects such as a toy-tower, and non-figure-shaped objects such as a container)
when the upper portion versus the bottom portion is visible? Regardless of orientation,
children judged an agent to be visible only if the head was visible. They further flexibly
extended these judgments to non-agents (i.e., a non-agent is not visible if its upper
portion is covered).
Despite the novelty of these findings, McGuigan and Doherty (2006) did not
delineate why children “zero in” on the head and upper portion of agents and non-agents
alike in their judgments of visibility. In contrast to mutual gaze, which instantly and
simultaneously binds two agents together and provides a common social context, there is
not much that is inherently meaningful about heads. Furthermore, other studies (Flavell et
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al., 1980; Russell et al., 2012) have reported that children will deny the visibility of the
self and other if one person’s gaze is averted—or if there is no “meeting of the eyes.” The
mere visibility of another’s eyes is not sufficient grounds for satisfying children’s
mutuality demand, and in the absence of ostensive communicative signals such as mutual
gaze, children’s responses cannot primarily be guided by the visibility of the eyes or the
head.
It is perhaps by sheer virtue of the head being a “container” for the eyes that the
head primes children to expect mutual engagement, or an intersubjective encounter.
McGuigan (2009) delineated the conditions under which children demand mutual
engagement by manipulating the orientation of a figure’s head relative to an observer.
Interestingly, the mere presence of a head did not satisfy children’s mutuality demand—
instead, only forward facing heads and visible eyes satisfied children’s mutuality
demand. When the figure was facing away from the observer either partially (90 degree
turn) or completely (180 degree turn), children reported that the figure was not visible.
Russell et al. (2012) tested children’s mutuality demand in a different line of
investigations. The first experiment replicated part of Flavell et al.’s (1980) finding that
children deem the self and other as not visible when the eyes are covered. Additionally,
children affirmed that their head or the head of another remained visible when the eyes
were covered—suggesting their ability to differentiate between the head and disparate
features of the face. In a subsequent experiment, the investigators confirmed that the
visibility of the eyes, and not visual access, sets the groundwork for children’s demand of
mutuality. Despite children’s prior training and current knowledge that visual properties
were afforded to the wearer by a pair of outwardly opaque, but inwardly transparent
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spectacles, they nevertheless denied the visibility of another who was sporting these
spectacles. Although another agent could still see them, and this visual experience was
bidirectional, children required their eyes be to be visible.
In games of hide-and-seek, children often try to hide themselves by covering their
eyes instead of their entire body. This hiding strategy underscores the significance
children attach to the visibility of another’s eyes in the context of reciprocal engagement.
Russell et al. (2012) found that children explicitly judged the faulty hiding strategies of
other agents as appropriate and effective. In a similar vein, these same children denied
self and other visibility in the context of averted gaze. Bridges and Rowles (1985)
investigated children’s projective abilities in games of hiding. In their study, children
were asked to hide a doll from a tall “monster” behind different kinds of two-dimensional
walls and subsequently judge the visibility of the doll to the monster. Their findings
suggest that children’s knowledge of visibility does not develop adult-like accuracy until
around six or seven years of age. While three-year-olds’ performance was poor, four-
year-olds’ judgments showed that they took into consideration the line of sight of the
monster relative to the hidden doll, and older children understood that both line of sight
and obstruction must be taken into account for accurate perspective-taking.
Moll et al. (2015) primarily investigated whether children’s negations of another’s
visibility outside of mutual gaze were dependent on the semantics of the perceptual
question. In doing so, the investigators empirically tested the speculation (see: Ryle,
1954/2002) that “see” is best characterized as a detection or mental verb whereas “look
at” is best characterized as an inspection or behavioral verb. Their study demonstrated
that children’s negations were strongest when the verb see versus look at was used in test
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questions. The investigators’ interpreted this as the following: “see” fits within the
figurative realm of speech and implies some sort of successful mutual engagement (e.g.,
“I would like to see my mother today”) whereas “look at” carries a literal connotation and
implies directing one’s visual attention to another person or thing. Moreover, the children
with the firmest grasp of reciprocity, as measured by a personal pronoun task, were more
likely to negate another’s visibility in the absence of mutual gaze. This finding suggests
that a pragmatic understanding of the personal pronoun “each other” is related to
children’s demand for mutual recognition. Perhaps early exposure to reciprocal language
is beneficial against intersubjective difficulties, especially those seen in children with
autism or other developmental delays.
As an inbuilt control to rule out haphazard responding, Moll et al. (2015) also
presented children with artifacts that had a particular salient characteristic occluded (e.g.,
the headlights of a toy truck). There was no generalization of negative responses from
agents to artifacts, demonstrating that children reserve the mutuality demand strictly for
agents. This finding, however, somewhat contrasts with McGuigan and Doherty’s (2006)
observation that children negated the visibility of non-agent figures when their upper
portion was not visible. These divergent findings prompt several plausible explanations.
It is possible that the qualitative or perceptual dissimilarities between familiar artifacts
and non-descript figures (e.g., toy towers and containers) yield different responses
although the latter fits within the general construct of the former. Unlike the multi-
dimensional artifacts (e.g., toy truck, clock, house) presented in Moll et al. (2015), the
figures in McGuigan and Doherty (2006) were vertically shaped and thus bore
similarities to the human form. Alternatively, the specific region of occlusion for artifacts
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in Moll et al. (2015) was not held constant in either the upper or bottom half, but rather
depended on the location of its salient characteristic. It is necessary for future
investigations to tease apart whether dimensionality or area of occlusion influences
children’s extension of the mutuality demand to non-agents.
In summary, although the phenomenon of the mutuality demand has been
relatively understudied, the above-mentioned literature presents convergent evidence in
favor of the notion that children between two and four years of age undergo a specific
developmental growth error. This singular finding may have wide-ranging implications
for social-cognitive development. The first likely implication is that children’s insistence
on mutual engagement, much like dyadic and triadic forms of shared attention, indexes
typical developmental trajectory. Another implication is that the mutuality demand fits
within a broader social-cognitive framework. The mechanism of shared attention may
play a role in shaping children’s cognition of social interactions. According to Russell et
al. (2012), children’s stringent criteria for mutual regard may reflect an overextension of
shared attention (see Discussion).
Current Study
The existing literature has thus far only studied the mutuality demand in the
domain of gaze. The current study investigates whether children extend the mutuality
demand to the vocal domain of communication, or whether this demand is unique to gaze
alone. Unlike any other modality, the eyes can both signal intentions and perceive the
world (Gobel, Kim, & Richardson, 2015). The ears, on the other hand, can only perceive
auditory information. Relative to all other non-human primates, humans possess a
uniquely white sclera, against which movements of the iris and pupil are highly
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discernable (Kobayashi & Koshima, 1997). This structural difference facilitates an
efficient way for conspecifics to signal and detect gaze (Kobayashi & Koshima, 2001). In
preferential looking paradigms, newborns look longer at open versus closed eyes (Batki,
Baron-Cohen, Wheelwright, Connellan, & Ahluwalia, 2000) and direct versus averted
gaze (Farroni, Csibra, Simion, & Johnson, 2002). The importance of gaze is particularly
apparent in atypical social-cognitive development. Senju, Yaguchi, Tojo, and Hasegawa
(2003) showed that children with autism display deviant patterns of gaze, including
reduced detection of mutual gaze. Hobson and Bishop (2003) postulated that visual joint
attention is central to reciprocal social interactions because congenitally blind children,
who are deprived of visual stimulation, develop autistic-like traits.
Given the primacy of gaze in early development, what remains to be understood is
whether children demand mutuality for successfully receiving (i.e., hearing another) and
expressing (i.e., speaking to another) vocal gestures. In vocal communication, turn-taking
presents a pragmatic approach. In order to facilitate the meaningful flow of information,
one person speaks while the other listens, and vice versa. The dynamics of vocal
communication break down without this reciprocal, yet sequential structure. The
pragmatic rules of turn-taking that apply to the domain of vocal communication do not
necessarily apply in the case of gaze, which has the unique position of instantly and
simultaneously binding agents in a shared social context. Therefore, gaze affords a
simultaneity between two people that is unparalleled in any other domain (i.e., the
“locking” of eyes between two people can immediately signal emotions ranging from
affection to aggression).
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Hypotheses
This study will be the first to explore whether children extend the mutuality
demand across other domains of communication. In accordance with the above-
mentioned explanations, we postulate that both of the following views are plausible: (1)
That children’s demand of mutuality and reciprocal engagement holds only in the domain
of gaze; (2) That children flexibly extend this demand to the domain of vocal
communication.
In order to better understand children’s application of the mutuality demand, we
asked children whether they can see, hear, or speak to another agent who had her eyes,
ears, and mouth covered. Figure 1 and Figure 2 illustrate the manner in which the
experimenter covered these facial areas.

Figure 1. The manner in which the experimenter manually covered her eyes, ears, and
mouth in the Eyes, Ears and Mouth Task, respectively.

Figure 2. The manner in which the experimenter covered her eyes, ears, and mouth in the
Eyes, Ears, and Mouth Task, respectively, using a particular device.
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Method
Participants
Participants were 24 (12 female) 35-52-month-olds (M = 45.16 months, range =
36.14 – 52.29). They were recruited from a local children’s museum or from a database
of parents whose children had previously participated in developmental studies. Pre-
established criteria for participation were that children spoke English, had no history of
physical or mental disabilities, and were born full-term (≥ 37 weeks gestation). Over half
(15) of the participants were White, eight were “Other,” and one was Asian. Participants
were tested on an individual basis in a testing room at the local children’s museum (n =
21) or at the university’s child research laboratory (n = 3) located in a large American
city.
Materials
A soft soccer ball (20 cm in circumference) was used as a warm-up toy. In the
experimental procedure, one of two experimenters (E1 or E2) used either her hands or a
device to cover a specific facial area. For the Eyes Task and Mouth Task, a black fold
made of felt (23 cm long, 7 cm wide) was used. For the Ears Task, a pair of black
protective earmuffs (13 cm in diameter) was used. Figure 3 shows these occluding
devices.
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Figure 3. Occluding devices used in the experiment. The device on the left (fold) was
used in the Eyes and Mouth Task, and the device on the right (earmuffs) was used in the
Ears Task.
Design
A within-subjects design was applied. There were two conditions for all three
(Eyes, Ears, Mouth) tasks: an Experimental and a Control Condition, with each child
receiving both conditions of each task. There were four trials per condition: two with E1
as the agent who occluded her facial area and two with E2 as the agent who occluded her
facial area. In one of the trials, E1 or E2 used her hands—and, in the other trial, she used
the designated device to cover her facial area. Children received a total of 24 trials (three
tasks across two conditions, two 16cclude types, and two experimenters). The order of
experimenters was held constant for each of the three tasks, with E1 always going first.
The order of occluders and conditions was quasi-randomized, with each child receiving
one of six pre-established orders.
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Procedure
Parents were positioned behind the child or observed the procedure through a one-
way mirror from an adjacent room. The child and experimenters sat in a triangular
formation, with the child approximately 85 cm across from both experimenters. E1 and
E2 sat next to one another approximately 60 cm apart. Figure 4 illustrates the seating
layout during the experimental session. Prior to the actual experiment, the experimenters
and child played with a small ball for 90 sec (or until the child was acclimated). During
this brief warm-up period, the experimenters refrained from using perceptual terms such
as “ see” or “look at.” E1 then withdrew the ball and started the experiment with a
demonstration phase in which it was made apparent to the child that when the
experimenter occluded a facial area (e.g., eyes, ears, mouth), her perception or speech
was impaired. The demonstration phase was important in particular for the Ear Task, in
which it was less clear that the experimenter was perceptually impaired. The order of the
demonstration phase varied depending on the counterbalancing schedule.

Figure 4. Aerial view of the seating arrangement during the experimental session.
Door
Camera 1
Camera 2
E2
C
E1
E2
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Demonstration Phase
Eyes Demonstration Phase. In this demonstration phase, E1 positioned the
blindfold around her neck and exclaimed, “[Name of child], let us show you something!
I’ll place my hands/this [blindfold] here, like this” (E1 placed her hands/pulled the
blindfold over her eyes). E2 then held up 3 fingers and asked E1, “Say how many
fingers!” to which E1 replied “I don’t know.” In order to establish E1’s current state of
visual impairment, E2 stated to the child, “She can’t—her eyes are covered.” E1
uncovered her eyes by removing her hands or pulling the blindfold down around her
neck. This demonstration was presented twice to account for the different 18cclude types
(hands or blindfold) used during the task.
Ears Demonstration Phase. In this demonstration phase, E1 positioned the
earmuffs around her neck and exclaimed, “[Name of child], let us show you something!
I’ll place my hands/these [earmuffs] here, like this” (E1 used her hands/the earmuffs to
cover her ears). E2 called out to E1 and said, “Repeat after me—I like turtles!” to which
E1 replied, “Huh, what?” In order to establish E1’s current state of auditory impairment,
E2 stated to the child, “She can’t—her ears are covered.” E1 uncovered her ears by
removing her hands or pulling the earmuffs down around her neck. This demonstration
was presented twice to account for the different 18cclude types (hands or earmuffs) used
during the task
Mouth Demonstration Phase. In this demonstration phase, E1 positioned the
mouthfold around her neck and exclaimed, “[Name of child], let us show you something!
I’ll place my hands/this [mouthfold] here, like this” (E1 used her hands/the mouthfold to
cover her mouth). E2 called out to E1 and said, “Repeat after me—I like ice cream!” E1
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replied with incoherent mumbling. In order to establish E1’s current state of
communicative impairment, E2 stated to the child, “She can’t—her mouth is covered.”
E1 uncovered her ears by removing her hands or pulling the earmuffs down around her
neck. This demonstration was presented twice to account for the different 19cclude types
(hands or earmuffs) used during the task.
Experimental Tasks
Eyes Task. Transitioning from the demonstration phase to the task, E1 looked at
the child and exclaimed, “And, now, like this!” as she covered her eyes with her
hands/the blindfold. E2 then asked the child, “And, right now, [name of child], can you
see [name of E1]?” During the control trials, the child was asked the same test question,
except E1 sat silently with her eyes in plain view. For the remaining trials, the test
question was shortened to the phrase: “How about now—can you see [name of E1]?” The
procedure was repeated with E1 and E2 switching roles (i.e., E2 performed the eye
occlusions and E1 asked the test questions).
Ears Task. Transitioning from the demonstration phase to the task, E1 looked at
the child and exclaimed, “And, now, like this!” as she covered her ears with her hands/
the earmuffs. E2 then asked the child, “And, right now, [name of child], can you hear
[name of E1]?” During the control trials, the child was asked the same test question as E1
sat silently with her ears in plain view. For the remaining trials, the test question was
shortened to the phrase: “How about now—can you hear [name of E1]?” The procedure
was repeated with E1 and E2 switching roles (i.e., E2 performed the ear occlusions and
E1 asked the test questions).
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Mouth Task. Transitioning from the demonstration phase to the task, E1 looked at
the child and exclaimed, “And, now, like this!” while covering her mouth with her
hands/the mouthfold. E2 then asked the child, “And, right now, [name of child], can you
speak to [name of E1]?” During the control trials, the child was asked the same test
question as E1 sat silently with her mouth in plain view. For the remaining trials, the test
question was shortened to the phrase: “How about now—can you speak to [name of
E1]?” The procedure was repeated with E1 and E2 switching roles (i.e., E2 performed the
mouth occlusions and E1 asked the test questions).
Scoring and Reliability
Children’s responses during the session were live-scored, with E1 and E2 taking
turns (i.e., if E1 was presenting a particular task, E2 asked test questions and scored
responses, and vice versa). A positive response (1) was scored whenever the child
responded with a “yes” or nodded her head. And a negative response (0) was scored
whenever the child responded with a “no” or shook her head. If the child’s response was
not clear, E1 asked for clarification by saying, “Is that a yes or a no?” If the child
mumbled or was inaudible, E1 asked, “[Child’s name], can you please speak more
loudly?” The manner in which children responded, whether verbally or gesturally, was
also scored. In order to assess inter-rater reliability, a research assistant blind to study
hypotheses coded a randomly selected sample of 6 (25%) of the children’s recorded
responses. The rater agreed with the experimenters’ judgment on all trials but one,
leading to a Cohen’s Kappa of .99.
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Results
There was no effect of 21cclude type (hand vs. device) on children’s responses, p
> .250, so this variable was removed from further analysis. Figure 5 illustrates the mean
proportion of children’s negative responses across task and condition.
A repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) with task (Eyes, Ears,
Mouth) and condition (Experimental, Control) as within-subject factors showed no effect
of task, F(2, 46) = .33, p > .250, partial η
2
= .01 and a significant effect of condition, F(1,
23) = 26.00, p > .001, partial η
2
= 53. Bonferroni-adjusted post-hocs tests revealed
significantly more negations in the Experimental versus Control Condition for each of the
three tasks (p’s = .002 for the Eyes and Ears Tasks and p < .015 for the Mouth Task). A
significant interaction, F(2, 46) = 13.34, p > .001, partial η
2
= .37, showed that the
difference between the Experimental and Control Condition was especially robust in the
Eyes Task. Bonferroni-adjusted post-hoc tests revealed a greater difference between
conditions for the Eyes Task than the Ears and the Mouth Task (p’s = .002) and there was
no difference in the size of the condition effect between the Ears and Mouth Task, p
=.240.

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Figure 5. The mean proportion of negative responses in the Eyes, Ears, and Mouth Task
across the Experimental and Control Condition. Error bars represent standard errors of
the mean. The asterisks denote statistical significance at a level of alpha = 0.05.
Discussion
The current study replicates previous findings that children negate another’s
visibility outside of mutual engagement. More importantly, the findings show that
children flexibly extend the mutuality demand to the domain of vocal communication—
i.e., children deny being able to hear and speak to another agent who has her ears and
mouth covered, respectively. These findings are partially consistent with each of our
postulated views: (1) That children’s demand of reciprocal engagement is uniquely
applied in the case of shared gaze; (2) That children do not limit this demand to gaze, but
rather extend it to other modalities.
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In light of our findings, we can state that children do not treat gaze as a unique
modality. Rather, children’s application of the mutuality demand can also be observed in
the context of vocal communication, which is consistent with the second view.
Nonetheless, and partially consistent with the first view, gaze has a special status among
all modalities because children more robustly denied “seeing” another person than
“hearing” or “speaking to” that same person whose eyes, ears, and mouth region
was/were covered, respectively. Unlike vocal communication, which hinges on the
pragmatic rules of conversational turn-taking, gaze is a potent social signal that allows
agents to simultaneously and immediately establish common ground or enter into a
bidirectional social interaction. This potency underscores the dual function of gaze,
which is to visually perceive the world and to signal intentions with eye contact (Gobel et
al., 2015). Other sense modalities do not have this built-in dual function. The ears cannot
both perceive auditory information and transmit auditory signals, and the mouth affords
only the transmission of vocal sounds.
Although no formal analysis was conducted, it was descriptively apparent that
children’s mean proportion of negative responses was higher in the Control Condition of
the Mouth Task relative to the Eyes and Ears Task. It is possible that children
misconstrued this simple speak-to question, one that required a binary “yes” or “no”
response. Instead, children may have interpreted the speak-to question more liberally, or
as a directive for them to utter words to the target agent. We postulate that there was no
room to make this error in the see-question and hear-question because these sensory
modalities cannot be willfully “switched on and off.” Unlike seeing or hearing, which are
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necessary to perceive and navigate the world, speaking almost always takes on a
deliberate mode.
Theoretical Considerations
The Mutuality Demand: Relations to Shared Attention
Despite the mutuality demand being interpreted as a developmental growth error
(Russell et al., 2012), children’s negations of visibility in the absence of mutual regard
may reflect a broader insistence on shared attention. Russell et al. (2012) deemed
children’s insistence on reciprocal engagement as an “overapplication” of the principles
of shared attention, a phenomenon that allows two people to confer their collective gaze
upon an external object or event. In order to establish a basis for social interaction, there
must be a synchronous convergence of attention on an external entity. The common
referent of this attention can be something perceptual or, to a somewhat lesser extent, it
can be rooted in conversation (i.e., two people co-attending to an internal conversation).
Without this basic principle in place, there cannot be a “meeting of minds”—or an
awareness between two social agents that something in the world can be instantly co-
perceived. Under this interpretation, it is clear how children’s experience with shared
attention (i.e., “I cannot successfully interact with you if we both cannot gaze at the same
thing together”) can influence their conceptualization of reciprocal engagement (i.e.,“I
cannot see you if you cannot see me”). With no external third entity in the picture,
children solely fixate on the ostensive communicative cues of another person. Therefore,
children’s mutuality demand can be viewed as an offshoot of earlier milestones in the
context of typical development. This theoretical relation between children’s experience
with shared attention and their subsequent demand for mutual engagement ought to be
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empirically tested. Of course, the prediction is that there will be a positive correlation
between children’s scores of shared attention and their adherence to the mutuality
demand.
The Mutuality Demand and Theory of Mind
To further understand why children undergo a developmental growth error with
respect to conceptualizing reciprocal interactions, we must also consider the larger
context of perspective-taking during this window of time. It is not surprising that the
gradual phasing out of the mutuality demand roughly coincides with the development of
a full-fledged theory of mind around four or five years of age. In contrast to claims that,
prior to having a theory of mind, children are largely egocentric (Fishbein, Lewis, &
Keiffer, 1972; Flavell, Everett, Croft, & Flavell, 1981; Liben, 1978), the mutuality
demand evidences that this is not the case. Despite its erroneous logic, children’s demand
for reciprocal engagement represents their attempt to adopt the perspective of another
person. This approach is erroneous because it comes at the cost of children’s own
perspective, which is the source of accurate and veridical first-person judgments. In other
paradigms that require perspective-taking, children’s “default mode” of reporting their
own perspective suggests that perhaps they are considering the “ideal” perspective in any
given situation. With standard false belief tasks, children respond through their own
perspective not because of an egocentric bias—but rather because their own perspective
in a given situation is representative of reality and thus optimal or ideal (i.e., “You should
look here because that’s where your ball is currently”).
Given the concurrent emergence of adult-like responding in both the mutuality
demand and theory of mind tasks, it is reasonable to postulate that a shared social-
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cognitive mechanism gives rise to the development of perspective-taking. This gradual
honing of perspective-taking skills allows children to develop crudely before they can
acquire a more complex understanding of themselves and others. In order to understand
which features of the social environment are responsible for faulty perspective-taking, it
is necessary to revisit Russell et al.’s (2012) notion of children’s overextension of shared
attention. The phenomenon of shared attention is so immersive in the early years
(Trevarthen, 1979) that children’s conceptions of the self and other become intertwined
(Macmurray, 1961). This “self in relation to the other” undergoes a rather prolonged
development before children are able to grasp that there can be a divergence of minds,
which includes visual perspectives as well as epistemic and affective states.
Implications for Atypical Development
Autism Spectrum Disorder and the Mutuality Demand
In contrast to children who undergo typical social-cognitive development,
children with autism display deviant patterns of gaze perception, including reduced
detection of mutual gaze (Senju, Yaguchi, Tojo, & Hasegawa, 2003) and abnormal face
scanning trajectories (Pelphrey, Sasson, Reznick, Paul, Goldman, & Piven, 2002). In
viewing the social interactions of others, individuals with autism display difficulties
processing mutual gaze as a signal for relevant gaze shifts (Böckler, Timmermans,
Sebanz, Vogeley, & Schilbach, 2014; Riby & Hancock, 2008). Their autonomic arousal
(i.e., increased skin conductance response) to direct gaze is proportionally related to
social impairments (Kaartinen, Puura, Mäkelä, Rannisto, Lemponen, Helminen et al.,
2012). Pellicano and Macrae (2009) reported that gaze processing difficulties in children
with autism lead them to make slower person-perception judgments, or to classify faces
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with either direct or averted gaze on the basis of sex. It has also been suggested that an
impaired ability to “read” facial expressions is linked to gaze aversion in individuals with
autism (Tottenham, Hertzig, Gillespie-Lynch, Gilhooly, Millner & Casey, 2012).
In addition, children with autism display challenges with reciprocal social
interactions and interpersonal connectedness (Hobson, 1989). Drawing on similarities
between children with autism and congenitally blind children, Hobson and Bishop (2003)
postulated that visual joint attention is central to the sharing of experiences. While most
congenitally blind children do not meet the diagnostic criteria for an autism spectrum
disorder, they often display autism-like features in the social domain. These deficits in
spontaneous social reciprocity are not exclusive to gaze, but also manifest in pronoun and
conversational topic shifts (Philofsky, Fiddler, & Hepburn, 2007).
In light of the above findings from previous studies, it is necessary to investigate
the mutuality demand in children with autism and understand the developmental
trajectory of the mutuality demand in atypical populations. It is reasonable to postulate
that the mutuality demand does not develop in children with autism given their
difficulties with shared attention and engagement in reciprocal interactions. If future
investigations provide evidence in favor of this hypothesis, this may mean that children
with autism do not experience a developmental growth error between two and four years
of age.
The Implications of Deficient Gaze in Autism
The deficiencies of gaze and intersubjective engagement in autism have wide-
ranging implications for subsequent forms of social-cognitive development. Specifically,
it has been reported that early impairments in shared attention are related to challenges
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with perspective-taking and false belief understanding in autism (Charman, Baron-
Cohen, Swettenham, Baird, Cox, & Drew, 2000). The common view is that early
disruption in intersubjective engagement broadly impairs subsequent social-cognitive
development. In support of this view, prospective and longitudinal studies of infants at
risk for autism (i.e., those with an older sibling with autism) show that they do not make
typical use of mutual gaze in their social interactions with caregivers (Charman, Taylor,
Drew, Cocerill, Brown, & Baird, 2005; Charwarska, Klin, Paul, Volkmar, 2007; Landa,
Holman, & Garrett-Mayer, 2007). Given this insecure foundation in dyadic interactions,
deficiencies in more sophisticated types of shared intentionality are observed at a
subsequent time point. These high-risk infants show reduced engagement in triadic
shared attention, or episodes of coordinated attention with a caregiver (Sigman & Ruskin,
1999). However, targeted interventions that promote shared attention, engagement, and
mutual gaze during the first year of life may reduce the likelihood of autism in high-risk
infants (Green, Charman, Pickles, Wan, Elsabbagh, Slonim et al., 2015).
Williams Syndrome: Typical Demand for Mutuality?
In stark contrast to autism, individuals with Williams syndrome exhibit a
tendency toward “hypersociability,” or an increased motivation to engage in social
interactions with others. Riby and Hancock (2009) employed an eye-tracking paradigm to
explore whether faces capture the attention of individuals with autism differently than
individuals with Williams syndrome. As with autism, Williams syndrome is a
neurodevelopmental disorder that manifests in diverse social-cognitive atypicalities—
e.g., deviant face perception and gaze behavior (Riby & Hancock, 2008). Therefore,
atypicalities of gaze and the way faces capture and sustain visual attention are present in
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both autism and Williams syndrome: reduced gaze and shorter fixations to the face are
evident in individuals with autism (Klin, Jones, Schultz, Volkmar, & Cohen, 2002) while
there is increased gaze and prolonged fixations to the face in individuals with Williams
syndrome (Mervis, Morris, Klein, Bonita, Bertrans, Kwitny et al., 2003). What is
“typical” about face processing in individuals with Williams syndrome is the way that
faces capture their attention. However, individuals with Williams syndrome show that
they cannot disengage their attention typically. In an eye-tracking paradigm, Riby and
Hancock (2008) found that individuals with Williams syndrome were deficient in “scene
scanning” because they did not transfer their gaze to non-face regions of an image.
Given this hyper-fixation on regions of the face, it is plausible that children with
Williams syndrome will adhere to the mutuality demand more strongly than their
typically developing counterparts. It is also plausible that children with Williams
syndrome do not gradually begin to provide adult-like positive responses around four or
five years of age. They may undergo a more protracted period of this developmental
growth error or, in the extreme case, may fail to phase out of the mutuality demand
altogether. If the latter case is supported by future studies, then the mutuality demand
should not be deemed a growth error, but rather a hallmark feature in individuals with
Williams syndrome.
Limitations and Contributions
One potential limitation of the current study reflects the need for more stringent
control procedures. These control procedures are necessary to confirm that children
engage in a one-to-one mapping of the question (e.g., “Can you see X”) to the appropriate
facial area (e.g., the eyes). Fortunately, this has been rigorously controlled for in previous
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30

studies. McGuigan (2009) asked children whether they can see an agent whose mouth
was covered, and Flavell et al. (1980) asked children whether they can see an agent
whose body parts (e.g., back or arm) were covered. In both studies, children affirmed the
visibility of agents whose eyes are exposed and whose other facial or bodily areas are
covered—illustrating that they do not indiscriminately provide negative responses when
just any area of the body is covered.
Despite the above limitations, there are several notable strengths of the current
study. The first is that it effectively replicated the previous findings on gaze and
significantly enhanced our understanding of children’s application of the mutuality
demand to other sense modalities. The sample size (N = 24) was adequately large for the
purposes of studying typical development and reflected the broader rigorous experimental
methods of the study. Furthermore, the within-subjects design allowed each participant to
serve as her own baseline and thus reduced errors associated with individual differences.
Future Directions
Future studies should incorporate procedures to rule out alternative interpretations
according to which children’s negations are not reflective of a demand for reciprocal
engagement. The following two more reductive accounts come to mind and seem
plausible. The first is that children may have confused the subject and object in the test
question and believed that they were asked if the adult (whose facial area was covered)
could see/hear/speak to them. Given the saliency of the covered area, it seems
pragmatically sound and highly plausible that this is in fact what the experimenter meant
to ask. After all, it is the other’s (i.e., the adult’s) perception that is impaired, and so it is
possible that children misunderstand the question accordingly. In order to address the
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31

possibility of children misinterpreting the question by reversing subject and object,
questions about second-person perception would serve as an effective control. This
reversal simply involves asking “Can X see you?” instead of “Can you see X?” If
children provide negative responses to these questions, investigators can reasonably rule
out subject-object confusion. Likewise, it is necessary to develop cross-modality tasks in
which children are asked, for instance, whether they can “see” another person whose
mouth is covered, hear a person whose eyes are covered, or speak to a person whose nose
is shut. If our hypothesis is correct, then children should affirm these questions—showing
that they engage in an isomorphic mapping of the relevant facial areas and demand
mutual engagement along the same “communication channels.” However, some “spill-
over” of negations between different modalities might be expected without this
necessarily disconfirming our hypothesis. For example, children might find themselves
unable to speak to someone whose ears are covered, or even to someone whose eyes are
covered. Under those conditions, important ingredients of a fully engaged, face-to-face
interaction are missing and so children negate the question because the other cannot
“uptake” the message or refuses to engage. Nevertheless, we do not think that such
“cross-modal spillover” of denials speaks against our hypothesis. Moreover, the
possibility of eye contact playing a mediating role in vocal communication must be
considered. Given this possibility, children should more robustly negate being able to
speak to another person whose mouth is covered and whose gaze is averted. This would
hold equally true, perhaps to a lesser extent, in the context of hearing another person who
has her ears covered and is looking away from the child. In order to maintain the normal
dynamics of face-to-face dialogue, humans almost invariably look at the person with
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whom they are speaking or addressing. However, there are certain contexts in which
vocal communication with another is forgiving to transgressions of eye contact (e.g.,
maintain a conversation with someone in another room). It is possible that eye contact
and other ostensive communicative cues mediate children’s experience of reciprocal
engagement in the domain of vocal communication. Despite children’s extension of the
mutuality demand to other modalities, future investigations should explore the function of
eye contact in children’s judgments of person perception and addressability.
Other control procedures should also be explored by future studies. In order to
firmly rule out the possibility that children’s negations are the result of misguided
pragmatic inferences (e.g., the salience of covering a facial region and the subsequent
questions about perception or addressability), it would be helpful to bring other, “non-
communicative” senses into play. The sense of smell does not invoke communication,
reciprocity, or mutual engagement. Therefore, children should always affirm “smelling” a
fragrance sprayed into the air when another person’s nose is shut with her fingers or a
clothespin. In other words, no “mutuality demand” is expected for this modality. What
requires further investigation and attention concerns the following points: (1) Whether
children’s mutuality demand reflects their sensitivity to reciprocal engagement; and, (2)
Whether children’s mutuality demand results from a pragmatic misinterpretation of the
question. If children report being unable to smell a fragrance when another person cannot
smell it, this would provide evidence in favor of the second point. This pragmatic
misinterpretation could then be attributed to children “zeroing in” on the saliency of the
covered facial area (e.g., nose, eyes, ear, mouth), somewhat reminiscent of the local
processing style that children with autism tend to adopt (see Happé & Frith, 2006). What
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may be heard as “Can you see X?” may be interpreted as “Can you see X’s
nose/eyes/ear/mouth?” However, given the multitude of control procedures in the
existing literature, there is scant support for such a view. Convergent findings show that
children indeed affirm seeing another person whose body parts such as legs or the back of
the head are covered, or affirm seeing inanimate objects with a specific region covered
(see the control procedures in Flavell et al., 1980; McGuigan, 2009; Moll et al., 2015;
Russell et al., 2012).
Conclusion
In summary, the current study has broadened our understanding of children’s
application of the mutuality demand—a peculiar developmental phenomenon observed
between two to four years of age. It subsequently tapers off when children begin to
provide adult-like responses. The findings provide support for long-standing claims that
children demand mutuality in the domain of gaze. More significantly, they indicate that
children do not limit this mutuality demand to the domain of gaze, but also readily extend
it to the domain of vocal communication. In contrast to hearing and speech, children
demand mutuality with much more rigor and reliability for gaze. Despite children’s
insistence on mutual engagement across modalities that are conducive to bi-directional
and reciprocal communication, gaze is the only modality that provides opportunities for
instant and simultaneous mutual recognition. Children’s strong insistence on mutual
regard specifically shows that they are aware of the special role that vision plays for
establishing interpersonal contact. They seem to be, at least at an implicit level, aware of
the potency of gaze as a social binding force or glue that binds persons together in shared
attention. It is necessary for future investigations to empirically study the theoretical
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34

implications put forth in this study. In particular, the paradigm of the current study should
be extended to children with autism and Williams syndrome to shed light on whether
atypically developing children undergo a similar developmental growth error. The
mutuality demand should also be examined in relation to other social-cognitive
phenomena (i.e., shared attention, theory of mind) to better understand what underlying
mechanisms are responsible for children’s insistence on reciprocal interactions.

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Abstract (if available)

Abstract Mutual gaze plays an important role in children’s judgments of person perception. Previous studies show that when asked if they can see an agent whose eyes are occluded (Flavell, Shipstead, & Croft, 1980

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Asset Metadata

Creator Khalulyan, Allie (author)

Core Title Children's ""mutuality demand"" in seeing, hearing, and speech

School College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

Degree Master of Arts

Degree Program Psychology

Publication Date 07/24/2015

Defense Date 05/30/2015

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag intersubjectivity,mutual engagement,OAI-PMH Harvest,person perception

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Advisor Moll, Henrike (committee chair), Manis, Franklin R. (committee member), Mintz, Toben H. (committee member)

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