Infants' Attention to Patterned Stimuli: Developmental Change from 3 to 12 Months of Age

Overview

Journal Child Dev

Specialty Pediatrics

Date 2006 May 12

PMID 16686795

Citations 67

Authors

Mary L Courage

Greg D Reynolds

John E Richards

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

To examine the development of look duration as a function of age and stimulus type, 14- to 52-week-old infants were shown static and dynamic versions of faces, Sesame Street material, and achromatic patterns for 20 s of accumulated looking. Heart rate was recorded during looking and parsed into stimulus orienting, sustained attention, and attention termination phases. Infants' peak look durations indicated that prior to 26 weeks there was a linear decrease with age for all stimuli. Older infants' look durations continued to decline for patterns but increased for Sesame Street and faces. Measures of heart rate change during sustained attention and the proportion of time spent in each phase of attention confirmed infants' greater engagement with the more complex stimuli.

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