Infant Visual Attention in the Paired-Comparison Paradigm: Test-Retest and Attention-Performance Relations

Colombo, John; Mitchell, Denis; Horowitz, Frances Degen

doi:10.1111/j.1467-8624.1988.tb01489.x

Cited by 65 publications

(68 citation statements)

References 30 publications

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“…Furthermore, 6.5-month -olds allowed to accumulate 5 s of looking during familiarization with an object, subsequently demonstrated familiarity preferences in a VPC task; however, infants of the same age allowed to accumulate 15 s or longer of looking during familiarization demonstrated novelty preferences. These findings and others (e.g., Colombo, Mitchell, & Horowitz, 1988; Fagan, 1974; Freeseman, Colombo, & Coldren, 1993; Richards, 1997; Rose et al, 1982) demonstrate that longer familiarization leads to greater evidence of object recognition in infants; and with increasing age, infants require less exposure during familiarization to subsequently recognize an object. Additionally, Diamond (1990) found that with increasing age infants demonstrate evidence of recognition memory following longer delays between familiarization and testing.…”

Section: Preferential Looking Visual Attention and Recognition Memosupporting

confidence: 58%

Infant visual attention and object recognition

Reynolds

2015

Behavioural Brain Research

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This paper explores the role visual attention plays in the recognition of objects in infancy. Research and theory on the development of infant attention and recognition memory are reviewed in three major sections. The first section reviews some of the major findings and theory emerging from a rich tradition of behavioral research utilizing preferential looking tasks to examine visual attention and recognition memory in infancy. The second section examines research utilizing neural measures of attention and object recognition in infancy as well as research on brain-behavior relations in the early development of attention and recognition memory. The third section addresses potential areas of the brain involved in infant object recognition and visual attention. An integrated synthesis of some of the existing models of the development of visual attention is presented which may account for the observed changes in behavioral and neural measures of visual attention and object recognition that occur across infancy.

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Section: Preferential Looking Visual Attention and Recognition Memosupporting

confidence: 58%

Infant visual attention and object recognition

Reynolds

2015

Behavioural Brain Research

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“…The preference may reflect infants’ ability to extract a global form. But it is also plausible that the preference instead reflects a simple preference for the illusory stimulus configuration over the non-illusory one (Colombo et al, 1988; Freeseman et al, 1993; Kavsek & Yonas, 2006), or detection of local configural or brightness differences that attract their attention (Bertenthal et al, 1980). Bulf and colleagues (2009) demonstrated that a Kanizsa figure embedded in a background of non-illusion-inducing pacmen elements did not guide the attention of 6-month-old infants, but infants nevertheless showed longer looking times for an isolated Kanizsa figure compared to a non-illusory organization of the same pacman elements.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Based on habituation and looking time methods, infants appear to perceive KIC figures, although researchers disagree as to the age at which this global perceptual ability is evident (range: 1 month to 8 months; Treiber & Wilcox, 1980; Bertenthal et al, 1980; Csibra, 2001; Otsuka et al, 2004; Bulf et al, 2009; Bremner et al, 2012). Some researchers have questioned whether the looking-time data actually indicate perception of the illusory shape or simply a novelty preference, a stimulus-related preference, or some other variable (Colombo et al, 1988; Freeseman et al, 1993; Kavsek & Yonas, 2006; Bulf et al, 2009; Sato et al, 2013), but other researchers argue that appropriate control conditions explicitly address potential confounding variables in static (Otsuka et al, 2008) and dynamic illusory displays (Curran et al, 1999; Kavsek & Yonas, 2006; Sato et al, 2013). Using a visual search paradigm combined with eye-tracking, Bulf and colleagues (2009) found that 6-month-olds did not attend to a KIC triangle when embedded in background noise, yet looked significantly longer at a KIC image compared with a non-illusory image.…”

Section: Local To Global Processingmentioning

confidence: 99%

From local to global processing: The development of illusory contour perception

Nayar

Franchak

Adolph

et al. 2015

Journal of Experimental Child Psychology

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Global visual processing is important for segmenting scenes, extracting form from background, and recognizing objects. Local processing involves attention to the local elements, contrast, and boundaries of an image at the expense of extracting a global percept. Previous work is inconclusive regarding the relative development of local and global processing. Some studies suggest that global perception is already present by 8 months of age, whereas others suggest that the ability arises in childhood and continues to develop in adolescence. We used a novel method to assess the development of global processing in 3-to 10-year-old children and an adult comparison group. We used Kanizsa illusory contours as an assay of global perception and measured responses on a touch screen while monitoring eye position with a head-mounted eye tracker. Participants were tested using a similarity match-to-sample paradigm. Using converging measures, we found a clear developmental progression with age such that the youngest children performed near chance on the illusory contour discrimination whereas 7-to 8-year-olds performed nearly perfectly, as did adults. There was clear evidence of a gradual shift from a local to a global processing strategy: Young children looked predominantly at and touched the pacman inducers of the illusory form, whereas older children and adults looked predominantly at and touched the middle of the form. These data show a prolonged developmental trajectory in appreciation of global form, with a transition from local to global visual processing between 4 and 7 years of age. KeywordsKanizsa illusory contours; perceptual development; global processing; eye tracking; global form perception Visual information about objects is often incomplete. Parts of objects can be occluded, missing, or blend seamlessly into the background, yet adults perceive the objects as complete global forms rather than a collection of disconnected local elements. In the laboratory, adults perceive holistic contours of shapes based on illusory edges that have no Author Manuscript Author ManuscriptAuthor ManuscriptAuthor Manuscript physical luminance, color, or texture boundary. How does this global perceptual ability come about? Although some researchers have found evidence for perception of illusory figures in young infants (e.g., Bertenthal, Campos & Haith, 1980;Kavsek, 2002;Otsuka & Yamaguchi, 2003;Bulf et al., 2011), others have reported that global form perception and discrimination of illusory shapes do not reach maturity until late childhood (Abravanel, 1982;Kimchi et al., 2005;Sherf et al., 2009;Hadad, Maurer & Lewis, 2010). Here, we used a novel approach-accuracy on a match-to-sample task paired with several measures of spontaneous manual and visual behaviors-to investigate the development of illusory contour perception as an assay of global form perception in children from 3 to 10 years of age. Our objective methods and converging behavioral evidence show a clear, protracted developmental program for global visual process...

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“…Robust visual attention directed towards the eye region also appears to be indicative of holistic face processing [62–63]. Human infants as early as 4–7 months of age likewise vary in how they distribute attention to face stimuli [64–65], and variation in attentional bias is associated with variation in face recognition. A large body of evidence indicates that infants who tend to process global properties before local properties, much as adults do, process information faster and more efficiently than infants who tend to focus initially on local aspects of the stimuli [66–72].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Early Predictors of Impaired Social Functioning in Male Rhesus Macaques (Macaca mulatta)

et al. 2016

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Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is characterized by social cognition impairments but its basic disease mechanisms remain poorly understood. Progress has been impeded by the absence of animal models that manifest behavioral phenotypes relevant to ASD. Rhesus monkeys are an ideal model organism to address this barrier to progress. Like humans, rhesus monkeys are highly social, possess complex social cognition abilities, and exhibit pronounced individual differences in social functioning. Moreover, we have previously shown that Low-Social (LS) vs. High-Social (HS) adult male monkeys exhibit lower social motivation and poorer social skills. It is not known, however, when these social deficits first emerge. The goals of this study were to test whether juvenile LS and HS monkeys differed as infants in their ability to process social information, and whether infant social abilities predicted later social classification (i.e., LS vs. HS), in order to facilitate earlier identification of monkeys at risk for poor social outcomes. Social classification was determined for N = 25 LS and N = 25 HS male monkeys that were 1–4 years of age. As part of a colony-wide assessment, these monkeys had previously undergone, as infants, tests of face recognition memory and the ability to respond appropriately to conspecific social signals. Monkeys later identified as LS vs. HS showed impairments in recognizing familiar vs. novel faces and in the species-typical adaptive ability to gaze avert to scenes of conspecific aggression. Additionally, multivariate logistic regression using infant social ability measures perfectly predicted later social classification of all N = 50 monkeys. These findings suggest that an early capacity to process important social information may account for differences in rhesus monkeys’ motivation and competence to establish and maintain social relationships later in life. Further development of this model will facilitate identification of novel biological targets for intervention to improve social outcomes in at-risk young monkeys.

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Infant Visual Attention in the Paired-Comparison Paradigm: Test-Retest and Attention-Performance Relations

Cited by 65 publications

References 30 publications

Infant visual attention and object recognition

Infant visual attention and object recognition

From local to global processing: The development of illusory contour perception

Early Predictors of Impaired Social Functioning in Male Rhesus Macaques (Macaca mulatta)

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