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Investigating looking and social looking measures as an index of infant violation of expectation
Author(s) -
Dunn Kirsty,
Bremner J. Gavin
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
developmental science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.801
H-Index - 127
eISSN - 1467-7687
pISSN - 1363-755X
DOI - 10.1111/desc.12452
Subject(s) - psychology , novelty , habituation , object (grammar) , measure (data warehouse) , perception , cognitive psychology , index (typography) , developmental psychology , social psychology , artificial intelligence , computer science , database , neuroscience , world wide web , psychotherapist
Accumulated looking time has been widely used to index violation of expectation (VoE) response in young infants. But there is controversy concerning the validity of this measure, with some interpreting infant looking behaviour in terms of perceptual preferences (Cohen & Marks, [Cohen, L.B., 2002]; Haith, [Haith, M., 1998]). The current study aimed to compare the use of looking time with a recently used measure of social looking (Walden et al ., [Walden, T., 2007]) in distinguishing between 6‐month‐old infants’ response to novelty/familiarity and a condition in which the object was covertly switched for a different object. Following habituation, infants showed more social looking in response to the object‐switch condition than the novel object change, whereas the more commonly used accumulated looking time measure did not distinguish between the two, showing an increase for both. Thus, social looking is a more valid measure of infant VoE than looking time.