Does the direction in which a figure is looking influence whether it is visible?
Previous studies have shown that young preschool children are highly sensitive to mutual engagement and struggle to diagnose the visibility of a figure when their facial area is occluded. The present study aimed to explore the specificity of engagement by varying (a) the orientation of a figure relative to an observer and (b) the visible area of the figure's body. Results indicated that young children are sensitive to the orientation of the figure and the presence of a salient barrier over the figure's eyes. These results paint a more complex picture of the development of percept diagnosis skills than those that J. H. Flavell, S. G. Shipstead, & K. Croft (1980) outlined.