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This study examined whether conceptual emotion knowledge serves as a prior supporting developmental increase in anticipatory attention, and whether such attention facilitates more adult-like emotion inferences. Children aged 5\u201311 years (N = 180, Mage = 8.02 years, 84 female; data collected 2024\u20132025) from China viewed videos while eye movements were simultaneously recorded and continuously rated the target character's emotion on a valence\u2013arousal grid. Anticipatory attention was indexed by the extent to which children's saccades were directed toward regions about to contain meaningful information. Conceptual emotion knowledge was assessed with a composite that combined emotion granularity, diversity, and performance on a standardized emotion understanding test. Multilevel, moderated mediation models revealed that conceptual emotion knowledge mediated age-related increases in anticipatory saccades toward meaningful regions, which in turn predicted more adult-like emotion judgments. Together, these findings suggest that conceptual knowledge acts as a developmental mechanism bridging children's prior experience and growing attentional strategies, enabling more mature emotion understanding in social environments.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1093\/chidev\/aacag149","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2026,7,27]],"date-time":"2026-07-27T11:23:09Z","timestamp":1785151389000},"source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":0,"title":["Conceptual priors drive development of predictive attention to emotion"],"prefix":"10.1093","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0009-0002-4142-1955","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Shuran","family":"Huang","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Psychological and Cognitive Sciences, Key Laboratory of Machine Perception (Ministry of Education), and Beijing Key Laboratory of Brain-Computer Interface and Mental Health Modulation, Peking University , Beijing ,","place":["China"]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-5184-9846","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Seth D","family":"Pollak","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Psychology, University of Wisconsin\u2014Madison , Madison ,","place":["United States"]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0009-0006-9018-5011","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Wanze","family":"Xie","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Psychological and Cognitive Sciences, Key Laboratory of Machine Perception (Ministry of Education), and Beijing Key Laboratory of Brain-Computer Interface and Mental Health Modulation, Peking University , Beijing ,","place":["China"]},{"name":"IDG\/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Peking University , Beijing ,","place":["China"]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"286","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2026,8,11]]},"reference":[{"key":"2026081109311114200_aacag149-B1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1016\/j.dr.2024.101167","article-title":"Executive functions and social cognition from early childhood to pre-adolescence: A systematic review","volume":"74","author":"Badarneh","year":"2024","journal-title":"Developmental Review"},{"key":"2026081109311114200_aacag149-B2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"1","DOI":"10.1177\/1529100619832930","article-title":"Emotional expressions reconsidered: Challenges to inferring emotion from human facial movements","volume":"20","author":"Barrett","year":"2019","journal-title":"Psychological Science in the Public Interest"},{"key":"2026081109311114200_aacag149-B3","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"9","DOI":"10.1016\/j.neulet.2017.07.045","article-title":"Historical pitfalls and new directions in the neuroscience of emotion","volume":"693","author":"Barrett","year":"2019","journal-title":"Neuroscience Letters"},{"key":"2026081109311114200_aacag149-B4","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"2992","DOI":"10.1016\/j.visres.2009.09.014","article-title":"Saliency does not account for fixations to eyes within social scenes","volume":"49","author":"Birmingham","year":"2009","journal-title":"Vision Research"},{"key":"2026081109311114200_aacag149-B5","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1016\/j.dcn.2023.101299","article-title":"Infant embodied attention in context: Feasibility of home-based head-mounted eye tracking in early infancy","volume":"64","author":"Bradshaw","year":"2023","journal-title":"Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience"},{"key":"2026081109311114200_aacag149-B6","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"1","DOI":"10.1167\/9.12.10","article-title":"Faces and text attract gaze independent of the task: Experimental data and computer model","volume":"9","author":"Cerf","year":"2009","journal-title":"Journal of Vision"},{"key":"2026081109311114200_aacag149-B7","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"7559","DOI":"10.1073\/pnas.1812250116","article-title":"Tracking the affective state of unseen persons","volume":"116","author":"Chen","year":"2019","journal-title":"Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences"},{"key":"2026081109311114200_aacag149-B8","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"1185","DOI":"10.1037\/emo0000934","article-title":"Inferential emotion tracking (IET) reveals the critical role of context in emotion recognition","volume":"22","author":"Chen","year":"2020","journal-title":"Emotion"},{"key":"2026081109311114200_aacag149-B9","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"181","DOI":"10.1017\/S0140525X12000477","article-title":"Whatever next? 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