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Individual Differences in Infant Visual Attention: Four‐Month‐Olds' Discrimination and Generalization of Global and Local Stimulus Properties
Author(s) -
Freeseman Laura J.,
Colombo John,
Coldren Jeffrey T.
Publication year - 1993
Publication title -
child development
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.103
H-Index - 257
eISSN - 1467-8624
pISSN - 0009-3920
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-8624.1993.tb04195.x
Subject(s) - psychology , stimulus (psychology) , visual attention , cognition , generalization , developmental psychology , fixation (population genetics) , visual perception , cognitive psychology , cognitive development , audiology , perception , neuroscience , mathematics , medicine , mathematical analysis , population , demography , sociology
Cognitive performance and development is negatively correlated with fixation duration patterns during infancy, and evidence suggests that long‐looking infants may process visual information more slowly than short‐looking infants. 3 experiments described here tested the possibility that these differences may be due to differential sensitivity to global and local visual information. Infants were administered discrimination and generalization tasks involving global and local information at varying levels of familiarization time. Results indicated that 4‐month‐olds process visual information in a global‐to‐local sequence. Both long‐ and short‐looking infants were sensitive to both types of information, although long lookers required additional familiarization time to match the performance of short lookers. Finally, apparent “generalization” of global information at brief familiarization levels was traced to insensitivity to local stimulus properties. The results do not support the hypothesis that long‐ and short‐looking infants are differentially sensitive to global versus local visual information at 4 months of age.