Planes, Trains, Automobiles—and Tea Sets: Extremely Intense Interests in Very Young Children Judy S. DeLoache University of Virginia Gabrielle Simcock University of Queensland Suzanne Macari Yale University School of Medicine Some normally developing young children show an intense, passionate interest in a particular category of objects or activities. The present article documents the existence of extremely intense interests that emerge very early in life and establishes some of the basic parameters of the phenomenon. Surveys and interviews with 177 parents revealed that nearly one third of young children have extremely intense interests. The nature of these intense interests are described, with particular focus on their emergence, commonalities in the content of the interests, and the reactions of other people to them. One of the most striking findings is a large gender difference: Extremely intense interests are much more common for young boys than for girls. Keywords: gender-stereotyped behavior, play interests, early childhood Supplemental materials: http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/[0012-1649.43.6.1579].supp We document here the existence of extremely intense interests (EIIs) in infants and very young children. A substantial proportion of normally developing young children become fascinated with particular categories of objects or activities. They display a pas- sionate, sometimes bordering on obsessive, attraction to items in their interest category. 1 This phenomenon is quite familiar to many parents, who are often mystified with respect to the origin, content, and intensity of their child’s passion. A good sense of what we mean by an EII is well conveyed in the following three summaries of parent reports in a preliminary study. In these cases, the EII concerned balls, brooms and brushes, and clothes and costumes. From the time he was a few months old, this little boy would stare intently at a globe lamp hanging above his changing table. Gradually, his attraction generalized to balls and spherical objects of any sort. He was constantly on the lookout for balls in the environment; he would spot a gumball machine from far off and would investigate any round object, no matter what size (including tiny pieces of vermiculite in potting soil). He begged his parents to buy him balls and ended up with a collection numbering in the hundreds that he played with constantly. Early in another boy’s second year, an interest emerged for brooms and sweeping floors. It soon expanded to encompass cleaning brushes and then generalized to all sorts of other brushes— hairbrushes, paintbrushes, toothbrushes, and so on. His parents indulged his passion to the extent that there were eventu- ally toothbrushes in every room of the house so he would never have to be without one. Very early in her second year, this girl began insisting on picking out her own clothes and trying to dress herself. She often changed clothes several times a day and was at her happiest playing dress-up. When she was around 4, the family attended a Civil War reenactment, and the parents succumbed to her pleas to buy her an expensive, child-sized antebellum-style ball gown. The girl’s passion eventuated in the entire family becoming Civil War reenactors. These three examples illustrate the extraordinary intensity with which some very young children become enamored of particular kinds of objects or activities. Our criteria for an EII include that it is relatively long lasting, shown in several different contexts (home, friends’ homes, day care, etc.), directed toward multiple objects/activities within the category of interest (real objects, rep- licas, pictures, videos, etc.), and independently noticed by people outside the immediate family (friends, extended family, teachers, 1 EIIs are distinctly different from security or transitional objects (e.g., Gulerce, 1991; Litt, 1986; Winnicott, 1953). In such cases, the child is typically intensely attached to a single cherished object that provides a feeling of security. Neither are we talking about the behaviors that are characteristic of obsessive-compulsive disorder (e.g., Leonard, Goldberger, Rapoport, Cheslow, & Swedo, 1990), such as repetitively checking, count- ing, arranging toys, or performing elaborate rituals. The EIIs are in some ways similar to the preoccupations and circumscribed interests shown by children with autism-spectrum disorders (Baron-Cohen & Wheelwright, 1999; Lord, Rutter, & Le Couteur, 1994) but are less extreme, are often shared with others, and tend to broaden and expand over time. Judy S. DeLoache, Department of Psychology, University of Virginia; Gabrielle Simcock, Early Childhood Development Unit, School of Psy- chology, Macquarie University, Queensland, Australia; Suzanne Macari, Yale Child Study Center, Yale University School of Medicine. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Judy S. DeLoache, Department of Psychology, University of Virginia, P.O. Box 400400, Charlottesville, VA 22904-4400. E-mail: jdeloache@virginia.edu Developmental Psychology Copyright 2007 by the American Psychological Association 2007, Vol. 43, No. 6, 1579 –1586 0012-1649/07/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/0012-1649.43.6.1579 1579