ESRC Society Today

Introduction The proposed project will investigate individual differences in attention in infants. This is usually expressed in terms of long- or short-looking infants, on the basis of the time taken to process an image. It is unclear why this difference occurs, yet it has a real impact on abilities such as learning, memory, and emotional development. This project aims to test three hypotheses which have been proposed to account for individual differences in attention, by investigating the development of two cognitive processes, covert attention and perceptual grouping. Covert attention refers to shifts of visual attention without eye movements. This is assessed by measuring the speed of shifts of attention to a target position that has been cued, compared to one that has not been cued. An infant who has successfully developed covert attention will covertly direct their attention to the cue, which has the effect of increasing the speed with which they shift attention to the target location once the target appears. Perceptual grouping refers to the process of grouping elements of an image together, based on visual or spatial properties. For example, parts of an image that are red may be grouped together (visual grouping) or parts of an image which form a straight line may be grouped together (spatial grouping). This helps us to recognize objects within an image. Perceptual grouping is typically assessed by showing infants an image in which the parts or elements can be grouped into rows or columns. They are then shown two test images, one depicting columns and one depicting rows. If the infant was able to group the elements of the original image they should then be familiar with rows or columns, and therefore show a systematic preference for one of the test images over the other. Both covert attention and perceptual grouping have begun to develop by 4 to 6 months of age. We suggest that both processes are affected by individual differences in attention. As such, we aim to test the hypotheses relating to individual differences in attention by investigating perceptual grouping and covert attention in depth. The three hypotheses are listed below: 1. Differential encoding hypothesis. Long-looking infants need more time than short-looking infants to acquire sufficient information for visual processing. This hypothesis explains differences in terms of infants speed of processing, and implicates the structural organisation of the brain. 2. Attention to different levels of information. Short-lookers prefer to respond to whole images (known as global processing), while long-lookers prefer to respond to details within an image (known as local processing). This difference in processing style requires additional processing time in long-looking infants. 3. Attention disengagement/Inhibition. Once attending to an image, long-lookers are less able to stop responding to that image in order to move their attention elsewhere, compared to short looking infants. Long lookers are therefore less efficient than short-lookers at processing visual information. Experiments This project will use a longitudinal design, assessing infants from 2 to 8 months of life. Longitudinal studies often result in a degree of dropout, therefore sixty typically developing infants will be recruited with the aim of retaining forty. In addition to testing the three hypotheses stated above, longitudinal testing will enable us to determine a) when covert attention and types of perceptual grouping emerge in long- and short-looking infants, b) how these processes develop over time in the two groups. Infants will be divided into two groups, long-lookers and short-lookers, by measuring the amount of time spent looking at a colour photograph of an adult face over a 20 second time period. The median (average) looking time will be used to categorise the infants as long- and short-lookers ie those who fall above or below the median will be classed as long- and short-lookers respectively. Experiment 1. The proposed research will first aim to replicate a previously reported effect, that long-and short-looking infants respond to different levels of detail in an image. The original study showed that long-looking infants predominantly respond to the features within an image (local processing), while short-looking infants respond to the overall image (global processing). This was carried out by showing infants images of overall shapes (global) composed of small letters (local) and then testing their preference for the local or global components of these images. If we are able to replicate this finding, this will support Hypothesis 2. Experiment 2. The next study will examine the development of covert orienting in long- and short-looking infants, to determine whether these individual differences in visual attention extend to covert attention. The development of covert attention has been linked to the progression from automatic to voluntary control of attention, and it ma

Award/Grant Outputs and Documents
Click on to download the document.	Number of Documents: 4

• Back to top