Mapping Gaze Development Across the Human Lifespan with Eye-Tracking Technology

Understanding how individuals scan and interpret their visual environment throughout different stages of life has been a longstanding pursuit in psychology. Recent research highlights that humans possess inherent oculomotor biases—tendencies that shape where and how they look at their surroundings. For example, people generally focus their gaze around the central part of an image, prefer to look at faces or text, and tend to move their eyes more horizontally than vertically or diagonally.

A study conducted by researchers at Justus Liebig University Giessen in Germany provides new insights into how these gaze patterns evolve from childhood through old age. Their findings, published in Nature Human Behaviour, suggest that scene viewing behaviors develop gradually rather than quickly attaining an adult-like pattern. This research involved setting up an autonomous eye-tracking exhibit at the Mathematikum museum, allowing thousands of visitors of various ages to participate voluntarily and provide valuable data.

Participants viewed 40 everyday scenes on a screen for three seconds each, with their eye movements recorded without any specific task. The study analyzed how much time was spent looking at objects like text and faces, and examined spatial biases such as the tendency to focus more on the center of a scene. Results indicated that distinct gazing patterns are not fully developed until individuals reach their early twenties, with notable variations during adolescence. Interestingly, children’s gaze behaviors were characterized by high variability, which only began to converge into more consistent adult-like patterns over time.

One remarkable finding was that gaze behaviors do not become uniformly similar among individuals until late adolescence, indicating a prolonged development phase. These results challenge earlier assumptions that most gaze strategies are acquired in early childhood. Instead, the research suggests the development of viewing patterns is a long process, influenced by environmental factors such as increased exposure to text during schooling.

Looking ahead, the researchers plan to examine how visual experiences and brain activity contribute to the maturation of gaze behaviors. Employing mobile eye-tracking devices to record natural viewing in everyday contexts, they aim to uncover how our visual environment and neural processes shape our gaze strategies over time. Such studies could deepen our understanding of visual development, cultural differences in gaze behavior, and the neural mechanisms underlying scene perception.

Overall, this research indicates that developing adult-like gaze patterns is a gradual process extending into early adulthood, which has implications for understanding visual cognition and designing targeted interventions to support children and adolescents in their development. Future investigations might also explore how these behaviors relate to brain activity—especially in visual and social cognition areas—and how these patterns differ across cultures.