Factors influencing the deployment of selective attention in twelve-month-old infants.

摘要

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the effects of stimulus size and different preexposure conditions on infants' ability to attend selectively. Infants were presented with two face-recognition tasks which contained both target and extraneous information. Half of the infants were presented with small stimuli, the remaining with large stimuli. Each task consisted of three phases. During the first phase, infants were habituated to an item of apparel. During the second phase, infants were familiarized to a picture of a face with either a different or the same item of apparel they were preexposed to. In the final phase, infants were presented with two face recognition test trials to determine whether they were capable of selectively deploying their attention to the relevant information (e.g., facial features) while ignoring the extraneous information (e.g., item of apparel). An interaction between stimulus size and the preexposure condition was demonstrated indicating that an infant's ability to attend selectively is influenced by these factors.