Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jan 17, 2026
Gaze in Action: Head-mounted Eye Tracking of Children's Dynamic Visual Attention During Naturalistic Behavior
Published on: November 14, 2018
Relating Infant Fixations to Adult Cortical Activation Patterns Using the Natural Scenes Dataset
Brianna K Hunter1, John E Kiat1, Steven J Luck1,2
1Center for Mind and Brain, University of California, Davis, California, USA.
Insights
Infant visual attention develops from simple features to abstract ones. Gaze patterns in infants and adults link to brain activity in visual regions, showing a shift towards higher-level processing with age.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Neuroscience
- Developmental Psychology
- Visual Perception
Background:
- Visual attention in infants rapidly develops from reflexive to voluntary eye movements.
- Early visual processing is driven by low-level stimulus properties, while later stages involve higher-order factors.
- Understanding the developmental trajectory of visual attention is crucial for cognitive development research.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the developmental shift in visual attention guidance from low-level to abstract features.
- To evaluate the representational link between infant and adult gaze patterns and adult brain activity.
- To test the hypothesis that visual attention development reflects guidance by increasingly abstract features.
Main Methods:
- Representational similarity analysis was used to compare gaze patterns and fMRI cortical activity.
- Participants included infants (5-7 months, 10-12 months) and adults viewing natural scenes.
- fMRI data from adult participants viewing the Natural Scenes Dataset were analyzed.
Main Results:
- Fixation patterns were significantly related to low-level visual regions in younger infants.
- Similarities between gaze and neural activity extended to mid-level visual regions in older infants and adults.
- This indicates a developmental shift in visual attention driven by feature abstraction.
Conclusions:
- Visual attention development involves a transition from low-level to mid-level feature guidance.
- This shift is supported by the observed relationship between gaze patterns and neural activity in higher-order visual areas.
- Findings suggest that visual attention becomes increasingly guided by abstract representations with age.
Abstract:
Visual attention develops rapidly across the first postnatal year, from reflexive eye movements driven by low-level stimulus properties to increasingly voluntary eye movements influenced by higher-order factors. To test the hypothesis that development reflects guidance by increasingly abstract features, we used representational similarity analysis to evaluate the representational link between gaze patterns (N = 47 5-7-month-old infants, N = 46 10-12-month old infants, N = 45 adults) and measurements of fMRI cortical activity patterns from adult participants as they viewed scenes from the Natural Scenes Dataset. We found that similarities across scenes for fixation patterns and neural activity patterns were significantly related only for low-level visual regions in younger infants but were related to mid-level regions in older infants and adults. These results support the hypothesis that, over development, visual attention shifts from being driven by the kinds of simple features represented in early visual cortex to being driven by the kinds of more abstract features found in mid-level areas of adult visual cortex. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkIV9QB0Uq8. SUMMARY: Prior research demonstrates that infant eye movements are initially driven by low-level stimulus properties but become increasingly adult-like and controlled by more abstract representations. We evaluated the link between cortical activity patterns in adults (from the Natural Scenes Dataset) and gaze patterns in infants and adults viewing naturalistic scenes. Fixation patterns were related only to low-level ventral stream regions in younger infants but to both low- and mid-level regions in older infants and adults. These results support the hypothesis that visual attention development reflects guidance by increasingly abstract features like those coded by higher-order areas of adult visual cortex.
