Attention demands influence 10- and 12-month-old infants' perseverative behavior.

Abstract

The present study examined the role of attentional demand on infants' perseverative behavior in a noncommunicative looking version of an A-not-B task. The research aimed at clarifying age-related improvements in the attention process that presumably underlies the development of cognitive control. In a between-subjects design, forty 10-month-olds and forty 12-month-olds were assigned to either a distractor or a no-distractor condition as a means of testing the role of attentional load. The authors used an eye tracker to record infants' looking behavior while they anticipated the reappearance of the target of interest as well as continuously throughout the task. The data demonstrated that 10-month-olds show more perseverative looking than do 12-month-olds and that increased attentional demand leads to more perseverative looking. Correct anticipation, however, was not affected by age or distraction. The results also failed to show that 12-month-olds are better than 10-month-olds at handling the increased attentional demand introduced in the distractor condition, in that the effect of the distractor was not larger for the younger infants. Our results are in line with the theoretical view of cognitive control as dependent on a limited attentional resource, which can explain perseverative behaviors in different tasks and at different ages.

Integrating reinforcement learning, equilibrium points, and minimum variance to understand the development of reaching: A computational model.

“…It tends to overshoot and then to overadjust the consequent movement errors, so generating a sequence of corrective submovements that progressively lead the hand to the desired target. This confirms the claim of the authors stressing the importance of the corrective function of submove ments (e.g., Berthier, 1996;Houk, 2011;von Hofsten, 1991;von Hofsten & Ronnqvist, 1993). Last, the model accounts for the developmental mechanisms underlying the decrease of the number of submovements observed by many authors during infant development (Berthier & Keen, 2006;Konczak et al, 1995Thelen et al, 1993Thelen et al, , 1996von Hofsten, 1991) and addressed by some computational models (Berthier, 1996;Berthier et al, 2005).…”

“…Thelen et al (1993) suggested that the submovements observed in the early stage of life could reflect the uncontrolled dynamics of the arm. Instead, many authors (e.g., Berthier, 1996;von Hofsten, 1991;von Hofsten & Ronnqvist, 1993) have argued that submovements are corrective movements directed to compensate reaching inaccuracies. Indeed, adults reaching for small targets often exhibit corrective submovements (Abrams & Pratt, 1993;Elliott, Helsen, & Chua, 2001;Woodworth, 1899), although some movement fluctuations might be due to the effects of underdamped motion (Fradet, Lee, & Dounskaia, 2008;Kositsky & Barto, 2002).…”

Attentional Predictors of 5‐month‐olds' Performance on a Looking A‐not‐B Task

“…In another study, Watanabe, Forssman, Green, Bohlin and von Hofsten () demonstrated that, on a looking A‐not‐B task, 10‐ and 12‐month‐old infants increased perseverative behaviour when additional attentional demand was required. Specifically, performance deteriorated when a distracting video of a bouncing ball was shown immediately after the hiding event on B trials, implying that the distracting event compromised the attentional demands needed for this task.…”

Sustained attention in infancy as a longitudinal predictor of self-regulatory functions

“…The A-trials were identical in the two sequences, but the B-trials differed in that in one of the sequences, a bouncing ball was shown in the center of the screen for 2 s during the delay when the target figure was hidden. The addition of a distractor has previously been shown to increase the difficulty of the A-not-B task (Watanabe et al, 2012). The order in which the two sequences were presented to the infants was counterbalanced across participants.…”

“…Berger, 2004Berger, , 2010. A further development of this methodology has been the use of eye-tracking (e.g., Forssman, Bohlin, & von Hofsten, 2014;Watanabe, Forssman, Green, Bohlin, & von Hofsten, 2012). This paradigm relies on anticipatory gaze, that is, on voluntary sustained anticipatory looking until the expected event occurs (i.e., the hidden object reappears).…”