Early Attentional Capture of Animate Motion: 4-Year-Olds Show a Pop-Out Effect for Chasing Stimuli

Preferential attention to animate motion develops early in life, and adults and infants are particularly attuned to chasing motion. Adults can detect chasing objects among up to 10 distractors and are better at detecting a chase among nonchasing distractors than a nonchase among chasing distractors. We tested whether an attentional preference for chasing has developed by the age of 4, and whether 4-year-olds can explicitly point out chasing …