Infants' acquisition of spatiotemporal expectations

The microdevelopment of infants' visual expectations was examined by analysis of the eye movements that 80 three-month-old human infants made during interstimulus intervals (ISIs) of an alternating picture sequence. For comparison, identical eye movement data were gathered from 10 infants who watched an irregular sequence. Shifts during ISIs were exhibited by all infants and occurred on 48% of all trials. Initially, infants' ISI shifts repeated saccades that had successfully located the preceding picture; during the course of the alternating session, repetitive saccades declined while alternating and anticipatory saccades increased. For infants who saw the irregular sequence, the frequency of ISI shifts did not vary systematically over trials. Analysis of saccade latencies suggested that infants quickly learned to inhibit a prepotent tendency in order to execute task-appropriate saccades.