An Eye Tracking Investigation of Color–Location Binding in Infants' Visual Short‐Term Memory

Abstract

Two experiments examined 8- and 10-month-old infants’ (N = 71) binding of object identity (color) and location information in visual short-term memory (VSTM) using a one-shot change detection task. Building on previous work using the simultaneous streams change detection task, we confirmed that 8- and 10-month-old infants are sensitive to changes in binding between identity and location in VSTM. Further, we demonstrated that infants recognize specifically what changed in these events. Thus, infants’ VSTM for binding is robust and can be observed in different procedures and with different stimuli.

Visual short‐term memory for overtly attended objects during infancy

“…Our target sample size was 20–24 infants in each age group; this target was established by evaluating effect sizes obtained in previous studies using the same basic procedure (Oakes et al, 2013; Oakes, Baumgartner, Kanjlia, & Luck, 2017) and conducting a power analysis using G*Power (Faul, Erdfelder, Lang, & Buchner, 2007). When comparing infants’ responding to chance, previous studies have typically found effect sizes in the range of d = 0.6 to d = 2.0, and a sample size of 20–24 infants provides sufficient (80%) power to detect these effects (24 infants to detect d = 0.6 and five infants to detect d = 2.0).…”

“…First, we identified an attention capture analysis window , which we used to evaluate infants’ looking to the rotating item. This window began 200 ms after the onset of the sample array, to account for the amount of time it takes to make a saccade (Hyun, Woodman, Vogel, Hollingworth, & Luck, 2009; Oakes et al, 2017), and ended 200 ms after the change occurred, which was before infants could execute an eye movement after the onset of the change. Thus, looking during this period would reflect infants’ eye gaze to the items presented during the sample period.…”

“…Our inclusion criteria for individual trials were based on previous work by Oakes et al (2013, 2017), and were modified for our analyses. First, we filtered trials on the basis of attention in general .…”

“…In our case, we have information about infants’ gaze every 16.67 ms. Because conducting t tests at every datapoint would inflate the family‐wise type I error rate, and because changes in eye movements over time are not independent (i.e., gaze position at one moment is likely to be near the gaze position at the previous moment), we used cluster‐based permutation tests . This nonparametric approach is commonly used in EEG and MEG research (Maris & Oostenveld, 2007) and has been previously applied to infant eye tracking data (Cantrell et al, 2019; Oakes et al, 2013, 2017). This approach is ideal because it solves the problem of multiple comparisons while preserving the high temporal resolution of the eye tracking data.…”

Persistence and Accumulation of Visual Memories for Objects in Scenes in 12-Month-Old Infants

“…In development, an emerging picture reveals a gradual increase in VWM capacity over the first year (Rose et al, 2001; Kaldy and Leslie, 2003, 2005; Oakes et al, 2006, 2017; Kibbe and Leslie, 2011; Kwon et al, 2014; Kaldy et al, 2016) that continues to develop into childhood (Simmering, 2012; Guillory et al, 2018). Using a version of the change detection task with three objects, Oakes et al (2006) found that 8-month-old infants succeeded at binding objects to their locations.…”