A study was conducted in which the infants' behavior was allowed to control stimulus duration. A group of five infants were tested once a week from 3 through 14 weeks of age. A second group of five infants were tested once a week from 8 through 14 weeks of age. A third group of 18 infants were tested once at 3, 8, or 14 weeks of age. Once a stimulus was presented to an infant, it remained on until the two observers had simultaneously recorded no looking behavior for a continuous period of two seconds. Each of six checkerboard stimuli and the grey square were shown twice in two different orders. The longest looking time to a single stimulus recorded in this study was 1073 seconds, or over 17 minutes. Looking durations of over 2 minutes were very common. On several occasions, durations of over 8 minutes were recorded. An analysis of the data was performed. The most important result of this study is the length of time an infant will spend looking at a stimulus in an experimental session. This suggests that it is possible to assess infant attentional patterns in chunks of long behavioral episodes. pnq

The visual behavior of infants in the paired-comparison paradigm was assessed with multiple discrimination tasks week-to-week at 4 and 7 months and longitudinally from 4 to 7 months. Results indicated that although task-to-task reliability was extremely variable and typically low, most measures of infants' attention averaged across multiple tasks were reliable from 1 week to the next as well as relatively stable over the longer longitudinal period. Across all groups, infants who had shorter fixations (i.e., more fixations per fixed-exposure period) during the familiarization phase showed higher novelty preferences. While infants' shift rate during test phases was a reliable individual characteristic at 7 months, it was not at 4 months; rather, data suggested that the difficulty of the stimulus discrimination may be related to young infants' shift rate.

The visual behavior of infants in the paired-comparison paradigm was assessed with multiple discrimination tasks week-to-week at 4 and 7 months and longitudinally from 4 to 7 months. Results indicated that although task-to-task reliability was extremely variable and typically low, most measures of infants' attention averaged across multiple tasks were reliable from 1 week to the next as well as relatively stable over the longer longitudinal period. Across all groups, infants who had shorter fixations (i.e., more fixations per fixed-exposure period) during the familiarization phase showed higher novelty preferences. While infants' shift rate during test phases was a reliable individual characteristic at 7 months, it was not at 4 months; rather, data suggested that the difficulty of the stimulus discrimination may be related to young infants' shift rate.

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