The development of visual behavior in infancy

Project Summary Despite decades of research on infants’ visual processing, little is known about how their development reflects changes in the visual input they receive. Throughout infancy, the view of the world changes as infants become able to shift their posture from lying on their back to sitting, or from crawling to standing and walking. However, researchers have primarily examined infants’ visual attention when viewing images taken from an adult viewpoint. The long-term objective of this project is to provide understanding into the nature of the development of infants’ visual attention given these changes in visual input. That is, because infants rely even more heavily than do adults on visual processing to gain information about the world, understanding how their attention develops considering these changes in viewpoint is critical for a complete understanding of healthy development. To accomplish this objective, this project will address 3 specific aims. First the research team will conduct work to compare infants’ visual attention to scenes from a familiar point of view (i.e., from a lying on the ground or crawling perspective) versus from a relatively unfamiliar point of view (i.e., from an adult standing point of view). Second, the research team will investigate infants’ visual attention to dynamic scenes. Although infants almost always have a dynamic view of the world as they move their heads and bodies, virtually all the research on infants’ visual attention is with static images. Finally, the research team will examine the effect of viewpoint in the context of other kinds of novelty. Infants’ looking behavior is active and allows them to sample information about the visual world. By investigating how infants’ visual attention adapts to one point of view and then adjusts when the infant achieves a different point of view, we can construct an understanding of how changes in in the visual system influence what infants learn about the visual world. Accomplishing these aims will not only provide insight into the typical development of the visual system in healthy infants but will also provide insight into points of vulnerability in that development and how multiple factors influence that development. In addition, because the research team will use complex visual arrays, such as natural scenes, this work will provide information about infants’ attention in contexts that mimic the infants’ everyday experience.