Measuring variation in gaze following across communities, ages, and individuals — a showcase of the TANGO–CC

Abstract

Cross-cultural studies are crucial for investigating the cultural variability and universality of cognitive developmental processes. However, cross-cultural assessment tools in cognition across languages and communities are limited. This paper describes a gaze following task designed to measure basic social cognition across individuals, ages, and communities (TANGO–CC). The task was developed and psychometrically assessed in one cultural setting and, with input of local collaborators, adapted for cross-cultural data collection. Minimal language demands and the web-app implementation allow fast and easy contextual adaptations to each community. The TANGO–CC captures individual- and community-level variation and shows good internal consistency in a data set from 2.5- to 11-year-old children from 17 diverse communities. Within-community variation outweighed between-community variation. We provide an open-source website for researchers to customize and use the task (https://ccp-odc.eva.mpg.de/tango-cc). The TANGO–CC can be used to assess basic social cognition in diverse communities and provides a roadmap for researching community-level and individual-level differences across cultures.