It is adorable to see how little children think they are hidden from others just by covering their eyes. It is as if when you close your eyes or place your hands on them, a cloak of invisibility extends around you. What is this behavior due to? How is it possible that children don’t know that others are still watching them?
These same questions were asked by researchers at the University of Cambridge, who worked with children between two and four years old. Of dozens of children, only one was able to understand that the people around him could see him even if he covered his eyes.
These psychologists designed a very simple and original experiment: they asked the children to put on a mask with dark glasses that did not allow them to see and then they asked them if the other person in the room could see them. Thus, it was found that children think that the simple fact that they cannot see means that they are invisible.
At this point the researchers wondered if the belief of invisibility was linked to the impossibility of seeing or the fact of hiding one’s eyes. Neither quick nor lazy, they devised a second version of the experiment in which the children wore the same masks with dark glasses but with these they could see (like classic sunglasses). Once again, the little ones thought that by hiding their eyes, they were invisible, which tells us that it is not about whether they can see or not, but only about the action of hiding the eyes.
Theory of Mind
Everything seems to indicate that children make an association between the “self” and the eyes, which leads them to think that when they cover their eyes, they are invisible. The researchers carried out a third experiment in which the other person in the room tried to make eye contact with the child when he was wearing the mask with the glasses with which he could see.
At this point it was noted that when eye contact was established, the children stopped feeling invisible. However, when the other person did not establish direct eye contact, the children continued to believe that they were invisible. Why?
First of all, it must be specified that at this age children have not yet appropriated the Theory of Mind. That is, they are very egocentric and are not able to put themselves in the other’s shoes, to understand their thoughts.
To better understand this phenomenon, we can refer to a classic experiment in which a child is presented with a type of comic strip. In it you can see another child hiding a toy and then leaving the room. Immediately afterwards, a person enters and moves the toy, hiding it somewhere else. At this point, the child enters the room again and goes to look for his toy, where will he go to look for it?
The most logical thing is for the child to go look for it where he hid it since he does not know that another person has entered and moved it. However, young children assume that the character has the same information as them, so they make a mistake and indicate the correct place where the toy is located. This means that they are not able to detach themselves from their knowledge to enter the other child’s mind and understand that they do not know the same data as they do.
Therefore, it would be logical to assume that when children think they are hidden, they also assume that they are invisible to the rest of the world, even if this is not the case. However, this is only part of the explanation, the other part is found in the theory of Joint Attention.
Joint Attention
Joint Attention involves the ability to pay attention to an object, phenomenon, or activity while sharing attention with another person. That is, each person is not only aware of the object but also knows that the other is aware of its existence, which implies a meeting between the minds to direct them to a focus of attention that has awakened the interest of both.
The classic example of this phenomenon is when a person looks at a place and then we direct our attention there. Before their attention was united, the object existed only in the mind of one of them, but later it became a shared object, an object that exists for the other. For adults it is something very simple but not for children. In fact, children begin to follow their gaze only from 6-18 months.
Well, according to the experiments carried out by these researchers, children apply the principle of Joint Attention to themselves. That is, they do not understand that they are visible to the other person until their gazes meet, until that moment of Joint Attention exists.
Reference:
Rusella, J. et. Al. (2012) Why Do Young Children Hide by Closing Their Eyes? Self-Visibility and the Developing Concept of Self. Journal of Cognition and Development; 13(4) 550-576.
