Bilingualism has been observed to influence cognitive processing across the lifespan but whether bilingual environments have an effect on selective attention and attention strategies in infancy remains an unresolved question. In Study 1, infants exposed to monolingual or bilingual environments participated in an eye‐tracking cueing task in which they saw centrally presented stimuli followed by a target appearing on either the left or right side of the screen. Halfway through the trials, the central stimuli reliably predicted targets' locations. In Study 2, the first half of the trials consisted of centrally presented cues that predicted targets' locations; in the second half, the cue–target location relation switched. All infants performed similarly in Study 1, but in Study 2 infants raised in bilingual, but not monolingual, environments were able to successfully update their expectations by making more correct anticipatory eye movements to the target and expressing faster reactive eye latencies toward the target in the post‐switch condition. The experience of attending to a complex environment in which infants simultaneously process and contrast two languages may account for why infants raised in bilingual environments have greater attentional control than those raised in monolingual environments.

No abstract

No abstract

The difference between major and minor scales plays a central role in Western music. However, recent research using random tone sequences (“tone-scrambles”) has revealed a dramatically bimodal distribution in sensitivity to this difference: 30% of listeners are near perfect in classifying major versus minor tone-scrambles; the other 70% perform near chance. Here, whether or not infants show this same pattern is investigated. The anticipatory eye-movements of thirty 6-month-old infants were monitored during trials in which the infants heard a tone-scramble whose quality (major versus minor) signalled the location (right versus left) where a subsequent visual stimulus (the target) would appear. For 33% of infants, these anticipatory eye-movements predicted target location with near perfect accuracy; for the other 67%, the anticipatory eye-movements were unrelated to the target location. In conclusion, six-month-old infants show the same distribution as adults in sensitivity to the difference between major versus minor tone-scrambles.

The ability to process and incorporate temporal information into behaviour is necessary for functioning in our environment. While previous research has extended adults' temporal processing capacity onto infants, little research has examined young infants' capacity to incorporate temporal information into their behaviours. The present study examined 3-and 6month-old infants' ability to process temporal durations of 700 and 1200 milliseconds by means of an eye tracking cueing task. If 3-and 6-month-old infants can discriminate centrallypresented temporal cues, then they should be able to correctly make anticipatory eye movements to the location of succeeding targets at a rate above chance. The results indicated that 6-, but not 3-month-old infants were able to successfully discriminate and incorporate temporal information into their visual expectations of predictable temporal events. Brain maturation and the emergence of functional significance for processing temporal events on the scale of hundreds of milliseconds may account for these findings.iii AcknowledgementsLike most things in life, it is rare to achieve anything without having help and support from those around you. I want to thank my supervisor, Prof. Scott A. Adler, for instilling sound research practices into me, teaching me the infant eye movement literature, and giving me an excuse to talk about sports. To my colleague and friend, Audrey Wong-Kee-You, thank you for welcoming me into the lab and being that person I could always count on. To the volunteers who helped with data collection-Arash Soltani, Anik Patel, and Toby Wercberger-thank you for lessening my workload and allowing me to develop leadership skills in training and task management. To my fellow graduate students and colleagues down the hall, thank you for making my time in the office enjoyable. Lastly, I cannot sufficiently thank the numerous parents who participated in this study with their children. Not only did these parents make the research happen, but they made for interactions and conversations that I fondly look back upon.While not connected to this project directly, it would be remiss of me not to acknowledge my parents who enabled me to pursue my master's degree by always being supportive of my pursuit for greater knowledge. Finally, I want to recognize my teammates and friends of the York University Dragon Boat Club. These individuals not only provided me with pleasant memories of my time in graduate school, but they also enriched my entire experience.