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Visual search and attention to faces during early infancy

Michael C Frank1, Dima Amso, Scott P Johnson

  • 1Department of Psychology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA.

Journal of Experimental Child Psychology
|November 12, 2013
PubMed

Insights

Infant visual attention to faces increases with age, linked to developing attentional skills. Better visual search performance in young infants correlates with more face looking, suggesting attention is key for early social development.

Area of Science:

  • Developmental Psychology
  • Cognitive Neuroscience
  • Infant Visual Perception

Background:

  • Newborns exhibit a preference for faces.
  • Infant visual processing and attention to social stimuli change significantly during the first year.
  • Looking at faces increases substantially in infants over their first year.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the relationship between developing attentional orienting abilities and the increase in face looking during infancy.
  • To determine if changes in visual search performance predict increased attention to social stimuli.

Main Methods:

  • Presented 3-, 6-, and 9-month-old infants with animated and live-action social stimuli videos.
  • Assessed infant visual search performance using both moving and static displays.
  • Correlated age-related changes in face looking with visual search task performance.

Main Results:

  • Replicated findings showing increased face looking with infant age.
  • Demonstrated a strong positive correlation between visual search performance in younger infants and the amount of time they looked at faces.
  • Found that attentional abilities are linked to social attention development.

Conclusions:

  • Infants' developing attentional abilities play a crucial role in facilitating early social attention.
  • Visual search performance may be a key indicator of an infant's capacity for social engagement.
  • Early attentional development underpins the growth of social cognition in infants.

Keywords:
Eye trackingFace perceptionInfancySocial attentionVisual attentionVisual search

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