This study assessed the extent to which visuospatial processing, as measured by visual scanning behaviour, was associated with infants' ability to recognize mirror image and structurally distinct three-dimensional objects. Simplified Shepard and Metzler (1971) images were employed. Using a remote eye-tracker, infants ages 10 to 17 months (n = 130)…

This study used an ethological approach to explore the behavioural adaptation of nineteen infants during their first six weeks in Residential Care (RC), or a Foster Family (FF) or an Infant-Mother Centre (IMC). Direct observations were conducted once a week at bath time. Observed behaviours were: sleep-wake states, visual exploration, motor…

Object names are a major component of early vocabularies and learning object names depends on being able to visually recognize objects in the world. However, the fundamental visual challenge of the moment-to-moment variations in object appearances that learners must resolve has received little attention in word learning research. Here we provide…

How do infants plan and guide locomotion under challenging conditions? This experiment investigated the real-time process of visual and haptic exploration in 14-month-old infants as they decided whether and how to walk over challenging terrain--a series of bridges varying in width. Infants' direction of gaze was recorded with a head-mounted eye…

Perceptual narrowing occurs in human infants for other-race faces. A paired-comparison task measuring infant looking time was used to investigate the hypothesis that adding emotional expressiveness to other-race faces would help infants break through narrowing and reinstate other-race face recognition. Experiment 1 demonstrated narrowing for White…

Infants are curious learners who drive their own cognitive development by imposing structure on their learning environment as they explore. Understanding the mechanisms by which infants structure their own learning is therefore critical to our understanding of development. Here we propose an explicit mechanism for intrinsically motivated…

This study investigated transfer effects of gaze-interactive attention training to more complex social and cognitive skills in infancy. Seventy 9-month-olds were assigned to a training group (n = 35) or an active control group (n = 35). Before, after, and at 6-week follow-up both groups completed an assessment battery assessing transfer to…

The infant brain may be predisposed to identify perceptually salient cues that are common to both signed and spoken languages. Recent theory based on spoken languages has advanced sonority as one of these potential language acquisition cues. Using a preferential looking paradigm with an infrared eye tracker, we explored visual attention of hearing…

Five- and 3-month-old infants' perception of infant-directed (ID) faces and the role of speech in perceiving faces were examined. Infants' eye movements were recorded as they viewed a series of two side-by-side talking faces, one infant-directed and one adult-directed (AD), while listening to ID speech, AD speech, or in silence. Infants…

The goal of the current study is to assess the temporal dynamics of vision and action to evaluate the underlying word representations that guide infants' responses. Sixteen-month-old infants participated in a two-alternative forced-choice word-picture matching task. We conducted a moment-by-moment analysis of looking and reaching behaviors as they…

This study examined differences in visual attention as a function of label learning from 6 to 9 months of age. Before and after 3 months of parent-directed storybook training with computer-generated novel objects, event-related potentials and visual fixations were recorded while infants viewed trained and untrained images (n = 23). Relative to a…

With many features competing for attention in their visual environment, infants must learn to deploy attention toward informative cues while ignoring distractions. Three eye tracking experiments were conducted to investigate whether 6- and 8-month-olds (total N = 102) would shift attention away from a distractor stimulus to learn a cue-reward…

In human newborns, spontaneous visual preference for biological motion is reported to occur at birth, but the factors underpinning this preference are still in debate. Using a standard visual preferential looking paradigm, 4 experiments were carried out in 3-day-old human newborns to assess the influence of translational displacement on perception…

Two experiments demonstrate that 5-month-olds are sensitive to local redundancy in visual-temporal sequences. In Experiment 1, 20 infants saw 2 separate sequences of looming colored shapes that possessed the same elements but contrasting transitional probabilities. One sequence was random whereas the other was based on bigrams. Without any prior…

Pointing, like eye gaze, is a deictic gesture that can be used to orient the attention of another person towards an object or an event. Previous research suggests that infants first begin to follow a pointing gesture between 10 and 13 months of age. We investigated whether sensitivity to pointing could be seen at younger ages employing a technique…