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    Faces attract infants' attention in complex displays

    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.

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    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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