Gliga, Teodora and Elsabbagh, Mayada and Andravizou, Athina and Johnson, Mark H. (2009) Faces attract infants' attention in complex displays. Infancy 14 (5), pp. 550-562. ISSN 1525-0008.
Abstract
Infant's face preferences have previously been assessed in displays containing 1 or 2 faces. Here we present 6-month-old infants with a complex visual array containing faces among multiple visual objects. Despite the competing objects, infants direct their first saccade toward faces more frequently than expected by chance (Experiment 1). The attention-grabbing effect of faces is not selective to upright faces (Experiment 2) but does require the presence of internal facial elements, as faces whose interior has been phase-scrambled did not attract infants' attention (Experiment 3). On the contrary, when the number of fixations is considered, upright faces are scanned more extensively than both inverted and phase-scrambled faces. The difference in selectivity between the first look measure and the fixation count measure is discussed in light of a distinction between attention-grabbing and attention-holding mechanisms.
Metadata
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| School: | Birkbeck Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Science > School of Psychological Sciences |
| Research Centres and Institutes: | Brain and Cognitive Development, Centre for (CBCD) |
| Depositing User: | Administrator |
| Date Deposited: | 22 Dec 2010 15:01 |
| Last Modified: | 02 Aug 2023 16:52 |
| URI: | https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/2428 |
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