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Eye tracking infants: Investigating the role of attention during learning on recognition memory
Author(s) -
TAYLOR GEMMA,
HERBERT JANE S.
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
scandinavian journal of psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.743
H-Index - 72
eISSN - 1467-9450
pISSN - 0036-5564
DOI - 10.1111/sjop.12002
Subject(s) - psychology , cognitive psychology , eye tracking , eye movement , recognition memory , object (grammar) , focus (optics) , developmental psychology , encoding (memory) , cognition , neuroscience , artificial intelligence , computer science , physics , optics
Taylor, G. & Herbert, J.S. (2013). Eye tracking infants: Investigating the role of attention during learning on recognition memory. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology 54, 14–19. In the present study, eye tracker methodology was used to explore whether there were age‐related changes in the focus of infant attention during a learning event and subsequent recognition memory for event features. Six‐ and 9‐month old infants watched a video of an adult demonstrating a sequence of actions with an object while visual attention was recorded using an eye tracker. At both ages, attention was focused primarily on the object and person, with the background attended to for approximately 12% of their viewing time. Recognition memory for the person, object and background from the video was assessed immediately using a Visual Paired Comparison procedure. Despite focusing on the central features while watching the target video, infants showed only limited evidence of recognition memory for the individual components of the event. Taken together, these findings suggest that the early age‐related changes in memory performance seen in the literature may not be the result of age‐related changes in attentional focus during encoding.