The Stability of Visual Habituation during the First Year of Life

Abstract

The short-term reliability and long-term stability of visual habituation and dishabituation in infancy were assessed in a sample of 186 infants from 4 age groups (3-, 4-, 7-, and 9-month-olds) seen for 2 within-age sessions and in a sample of 69 infants seen longitudinally at 3, 4, 7, and 9 months of age. Moderate week-to-week reliability (r's = .30-.50) was observed for duration-based and magnitude of habituation variables at all ages, although better reliability was evident at 4 and 9 months than at 3 and 7 months. In most cases, the reliability of habituation magnitude measures was attributable to the reliability of the peak fixation alone. Data from the longitudinal sample suggested that only the duration of peak fixation was consistently stable across the ages tested, although stability for several measures emerged across the 7-9-month testing. No consistent reliability or stability emerged for the presence or magnitude of dishabituation in either sample.

Cognitive functioning in 8- to 18-month old drug-exposed infants.

“…Two presentations of the same woman's smiling face (novelty stimulus) and 2 final trials of the same woman's neutral face (rehabituation) were presented following habituation. Faces have been used successfully as stimuli in several studies during the I st year of life (Colombo et al, 1987;Fagan, 1974).…”

Commentary

“…Based on these demonstrations of moderate, and not always consistent, correlations between mea sures, it would appear that if visual attention assessments are to be used in studies of developmental prediction, multiple assess ments would be preferable. This opinion has been expressed by Colombo et al [ 1987] and here by Slater et al They point out that the low correlations reported from infancy to later childhood are probably due to the fact that the dependent measures used as predic tors were collected on one occasion only. As a final comment on reliability of measures, we cannot ignore the probable fact that many studies that do not show reliable corre lations between repeated measures do not get published [Lecuyer, this issue], and this may be the same for the studies on predic tion of later cognitive development from early assessment.…”

“…When correla tion are obtained, they are mostly of moder ate or low amplitude. As Colombo et al [1987] have concluded, 'findings of moder ate reliability suggest some internally consis tent process. However, the amount of vari ance accounted for by these estimates of reli ability never exceeded 28%.'…”

“…Other studies reported in the present papers showed moderate correla tions between some of the measures on two sessions (for example, total fixation time, first fixation, average fixation time, habitua tion patterns), but the correlations were not always the same from one study to the other nor based on the same measures. In a recent study Colombo et al [1987] observed habit uation performance to color slides of faces in a cross-sectional sample (3, 4, 7, 9 months) at two sessions 1-2 weeks apart (short-term), and in a longitudinal sample assessed at each of these ages. The authors note that 'overall, infants' visual habituation was fairly reliable over the short term and less reliable over the longer term'.…”

“…Dishabituation did not show any stability (nor did it in the study reported by Slater et al). However, the measure shown to be the most reliable by Colombo et al [ 1987], the peak or longest look in a session, is not the measure used to predict later performance in most studies.…”