Gaze Shift as an Interactional Resource for Very Young Children

This article examines how very young children in a day care center make use of their peers' gaze shifts to differentially locate and prepare for the possibility of a caregiver intervention during situations of their biting, hitting, pushing, and the like. At issue is how the visible character of a gaze shift--that is, the manner in which it is produced and its position in a sequence of ongoing activities--constitutes gaze as differentiable social action and, further, provides children with a resource for discerning what is likely to "happen next". Children, sensitive to the epistemic status of what the peer may or may not have located in terms of the caregiver as an "already there," a "newly discovered," or a "yet to be discovered" feature of the scene cease, continue, or revise their harassments in accord with their discernments. (Contains 1 table, 3 figures and 7 footnotes.)