Habituation and dishabituation are the most prevalent measures of infant cognitive functioning, and they have reliably been shown to predict later cognitive outcomes. Yet, the exact mechanisms underlying infant habituation and dishabituation are still unclear. To investigate them, we tested 106 8-month-old infants on a classic habituation task and…

The effect of background television on 6- and 12-month-olds' attention during 20 min of toy play was examined. During the first or second half of the session, a clip from a variety of commonly available television programs was presented. The duration and frequency of infants' looks to the toys and to the television indicated that regardless of age…

This study addressed three major questions pertaining to habituation of visual attention in infants: (1) does habituation occur gradually? (2) how do fast and slow habituators compare in their response to discrepancy? and (3) does intervening stimulation produce interference with infants' visual recognition memory? The subjects were 36 17-week-old…

Paper presented at the Merrill-Palmer Institute on Research and Training of Infant Development (Detroit, Mich., Feb. 15-17, 1968).

An earlier version of this paper was presented by Uzgiris at the meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development, Minneapolis, Minnesota, March, 1965. (WY)

Habituation and dishabituation to a simple geometric stimulus were examined for a sample of 36 5-month old subjects. All subjects viewed successive presentations of a standard stimulus, and, following a retention interval, a single presentation of the standard and a novel stimulus in the test phase. During the interpolated interval, repeated…

Attempts to improve methods employed by Uzgiris and Hunt. The longitudinal schedule of events in this experiment involved 24 infants one month old in an experimental group whose mothers were instructed to present and change a visual stimulus pattern. (WY)

Results support the contention that infant attention should be divided into separate attention-getting and attention-holding processes. (Author)

Individual differences in pattern of habituation in fixation time and cardiac change to visual and auditory stimuli are described. Subjects were 94 5- and 10-month-old infants. (Author/MP)

This research project assessed: (1) the practicality of recording heart rate in 18-month-old infants as they watched events filmed on color, silent motion picture films; and (2) the validity and sensitivity of heart rate change as an index of differential attention arousal elicited by changes within and between complex visual events. The research…

This experiment examines extended learning over a 4-day period in infants exposed to responsive and unresponsive wooden mobiles. Frequency of kicks and attention to the mobile increased over the first three days and was found to vary with the introduction of a novel mobile on day four. (GO)

Examined visual fixation in infants 6 months to 2 years old for fit with theory of attentional inertia. Found that fixations had lognormal distribution, heart rate decreased during a look, and heart rate returned to prestimulus levels immediately before look offset. Older children showed different looking patterns to two types of stimuli; younger…

Three related experiments were conducted to investigate the effects of novel and familiar stimuli on infant attention. The procedure in each of the experiments was to place an infant before a matrix panel composed of six rows of six lights. Two patterns of lights were used to obtain the infants' fixation time: (1) a point pattern, a single…