Premium
Exploring the Emergence of Side Biases and Familiarity–Novelty Preferences from the Real‐Time Dynamics of Infant Looking
Author(s) -
FisherThompson Donna
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
infancy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.361
H-Index - 69
eISSN - 1532-7078
pISSN - 1525-0008
DOI - 10.1111/infa.12051
Subject(s) - novelty , psychology , persistence (discontinuity) , preference , task (project management) , dynamics (music) , cognitive psychology , developmental psychology , novelty seeking , stability (learning theory) , social psychology , statistics , computer science , mathematics , temperament , machine learning , pedagogy , geotechnical engineering , management , personality , engineering , economics
This study examined how look dynamics contribute to infants’ emerging novelty preferences. Time‐series analyses were used to study the temporal nature of looking displayed by 3‐ to 5‐month‐old infants during a serial paired‐comparison task. Evidence was found only for short‐term stability: Novelty preferences and side biases were not stable from one visit to the next, but looking was consistent from one moment to the next producing stability within trials and temporarily across trials leading to the formation of behavioral runs. Persistence in looking left or right across multiple trials did not change from one visit to the next, but persistence in looking at familiar stimuli declined with age. By Visit 3, familiarity runs occurred less often than did novelty runs. Frequent but highly variable runs, including surprisingly late familiarity preferences, suggest that overall side biases and novelty preferences found during visual preference tasks are emergent phenomena affected by moment‐to‐moment changes in looking.