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Updated: Jun 10, 2026
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Published on: April 19, 2017
The influence of pets on infants' processing of cat and dog images
Karinna B Hurley1, Kristine A Kovack-Lesh, Lisa M Oakes
1The University of California, Davis, CA 95618, USA.
Abstract:
We examined how experience at home with pets is related to infants' processing of animal stimuli in a standard laboratory procedure. We presented 6-month-old infants with photographs of cats or dogs and found that infants with pets at home (N=40) responded differently to the pictures than infants without pets (N=40). These results suggest that infants' experience in one context (at home) contributes to their processing of similar stimuli in a different context (the laboratory), and have implications for how infants' early experience shapes basic cognitive processing.