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Mousley VL, MacSweeney M, Mercure E. Revisiting perceptual sensitivity to non-native speech in a diverse sample of bilinguals. Infant Behav Dev 2024; 76:101959. [PMID: 38781790 DOI: 10.1016/j.infbeh.2024.101959] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/30/2024] [Revised: 04/18/2024] [Accepted: 05/12/2024] [Indexed: 05/25/2024]
Abstract
Werker and Tees (1984) prompted decades of research attempting to detail the paths infants take towards specialisation for the sounds of their native language(s). Most of this research has examined the trajectories of monolingual children. However, it has also been proposed that bilinguals, who are exposed to greater phonetic variability than monolinguals and must learn the rules of two languages, may remain perceptually open to non-native language sounds later into life than monolinguals. Using a visual habituation paradigm, the current study tests this question by comparing 15- to 18-month-old monolingual and bilingual children's developmental trajectories for non-native phonetic consonant contrast discrimination. A novel approach to the integration of stimulus presentation software with eye-tracking software was validated for objective measurement of infant looking time. The results did not support the hypothesis of a protracted period of sensitivity to non-native phonetic contrasts in bilingual compared to monolingual infants. Implications for diversification of perceptual narrowing research and implementation of increasingly sensitive measures are discussed.
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Affiliation(s)
- Victoria L Mousley
- Centre for Brain and Cognitive Development, School of Psychological Sciences, Birkbeck, University of London, London WC1E 7HX, United Kingdom.
| | - Mairéad MacSweeney
- Deafness, Cognition and Language Research Centre, University College London, London WC1H 0PD, United Kingdom; Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, London WC1N 3AZ, United Kingdom.
| | - Evelyne Mercure
- Centre for Brain and Cognitive Development, School of Psychological Sciences, Birkbeck, University of London, London WC1E 7HX, United Kingdom; Department of Psychology, Goldsmiths, University of London, London SE14 6NW, United Kingdom.
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2
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Pedale T, Mastroberardino S, Capurso M, Macrì S, Santangelo V. Developmental differences in the impact of perceptual salience on short-term memory performance and meta-memory skills. Sci Rep 2022; 12:8185. [PMID: 35581267 PMCID: PMC9113989 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-022-11624-8] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/03/2021] [Accepted: 04/21/2022] [Indexed: 11/09/2022] Open
Abstract
In everyday life, individuals are surrounded by many stimuli that compete to access attention and memory. Evidence shows that perceptually salient stimuli have more chances to capture attention resources, thus to be encoded into short-term memory (STM). However, the impact of perceptual salience on STM at different developmental stages is entirely unexplored. Here we assessed STM performance and meta-memory skills of 6, 10, and 18 years-old participants (total N = 169) using a delayed match-to-sample task. On each trial, participants freely explored a complex (cartoon-like) scene for 4 s. After a retention interval of 4 s, they discriminated the same/different position of a target-object extracted from the area of maximal or minimal salience of the initially-explored scene. Then, they provided a confidence judgment of their STM performance, as an index of meta-memory skills. When taking into account 'confident' responses, we found increased STM performance following targets at maximal versus minimal salience only in adult participants. Similarly, only adults showed enhanced meta-memory capabilities following maximal versus minimal salience targets. These findings documented a late development in the impact of perceptual salience on STM performance and in the improvement of metacognitive capabilities to properly judge the content of one's own memory representation.
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Affiliation(s)
- Tiziana Pedale
- Functional Neuroimaging Laboratory, IRCCS Santa Lucia Foundation, Rome, Italy
| | - Serena Mastroberardino
- Department of Psychology, School of Medicine and Psychology, Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy
| | - Michele Capurso
- Department of Philosophy, Social Sciences and Education, University of Perugia, Piazza G. Ermini 1, 06123, Perugia, Italy
| | - Simone Macrì
- Centre for Behavioural Sciences and Mental Health, Istituto Superiore di Sanità, Rome, Italy
| | - Valerio Santangelo
- Functional Neuroimaging Laboratory, IRCCS Santa Lucia Foundation, Rome, Italy. .,Department of Philosophy, Social Sciences and Education, University of Perugia, Piazza G. Ermini 1, 06123, Perugia, Italy.
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3
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Pomaranski KI, Hayes TR, Kwon MK, Henderson JM, Oakes LM. Developmental changes in natural scene viewing in infancy. Dev Psychol 2021; 57:1025-1041. [PMID: 34435820 PMCID: PMC8406411 DOI: 10.1037/dev0001020] [Citation(s) in RCA: 10] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/08/2022]
Abstract
We extend decades of research on infants' visual processing by examining their eye gaze during viewing of natural scenes. We examined the eye movements of a racially diverse group of 4- to 12-month-old infants (N = 54; 27 boys; 24 infants were White and not Hispanic, 30 infants were African American, Asian American, mixed race and/or Hispanic) as they viewed images selected from the MIT Saliency Benchmark Project. In general, across this age range infants' fixation distributions became more consistent and more adult-like, suggesting that infants' fixations in natural scenes become increasingly more systematic. Evaluation of infants' fixation patterns with saliency maps generated by different models of physical salience revealed that although over this age range there was an increase in the correlations between infants' fixations and saliency, the amount of variance accounted for by salience actually decreased. At the youngest age, the amount of variance accounted for by salience was very similar to the consistency between infants' fixations, suggesting that the systematicity in these youngest infants' fixations was explained by their attention to physically salient regions. By 12 months, in contrast, the consistency between infants was greater than the variance accounted for by salience, suggesting that the systematicity in older infants' fixations reflected more than their attention to physically salient regions. Together these results show that infants' fixations when viewing natural scenes becomes more systematic and predictable, and that predictability is due to their attention to features other than physical salience. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).
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Woodruff Carr K, Perszyk DR, Norton ES, Voss JL, Poeppel D, Waxman SR. Developmental changes in auditory‐evoked neural activity underlie infants’ links between language and cognition. Dev Sci 2021; 24:e13121. [DOI: 10.1111/desc.13121] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/12/2020] [Revised: 04/21/2021] [Accepted: 04/27/2021] [Indexed: 11/29/2022]
Affiliation(s)
- Kali Woodruff Carr
- Department of Psychology Northwestern University Evanston Illinois USA
- Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders Northwestern University Evanston Illinois USA
| | | | - Elizabeth S. Norton
- Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders Northwestern University Evanston Illinois USA
- Institute for Innovations in Developmental Sciences Northwestern University Chicago Illinois USA
| | - Joel L. Voss
- Institute for Innovations in Developmental Sciences Northwestern University Chicago Illinois USA
- Department of Medical Social Sciences Ken and Ruth Davee Department of Neurology Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences Interdepartmental Neuroscience Program, Feinberg School of Medicine Northwestern University Chicago Illinois USA
| | - David Poeppel
- Department of Neuroscience Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics Frankfurt am Main Germany
- Department of Psychology and Center for Neural Science New York University New York New York USA
| | - Sandra R. Waxman
- Department of Psychology Northwestern University Evanston Illinois USA
- Institute for Innovations in Developmental Sciences Northwestern University Chicago Illinois USA
- Institute for Policy Research Northwestern University Evanston Illinois USA
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5
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Werchan DM, Amso D. Top-down knowledge rapidly acquired through abstract rule learning biases subsequent visual attention in 9-month-old infants. Dev Cogn Neurosci 2020; 42:100761. [PMID: 32072934 PMCID: PMC7242661 DOI: 10.1016/j.dcn.2020.100761] [Citation(s) in RCA: 14] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/16/2019] [Revised: 01/11/2020] [Accepted: 01/18/2020] [Indexed: 12/15/2022] Open
Abstract
Visual attention is an information-gathering mechanism that supports the emergence of complex perceptual and cognitive capacities. Yet, little is known about how the infant brain learns to direct attention to information that is most relevant for learning and behavior. Here we address this gap by examining whether learning a hierarchical rule structure, where there is a higher-order feature that organizes visual inputs into predictable sequences, subsequently biases 9-month-old infants' visual attention to the higher-order visual feature. In Experiment 1, we found that individual differences in infants' ability to structure simple visual inputs into generalizable rules was related to the change in infants' attention biases towards higher-order features. In Experiment 2, we found that increased functional connectivity between the PFC and visual cortex was related to the efficacy of rule learning. Moreover, Granger causality analyses provided exploratory evidence that increased functional connectivity reflected PFC influence over visual cortex. These findings provide new insights into how the infant brain learns to flexibly select features from the cluttered visual world that were previously relevant for learning and behavior.
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Affiliation(s)
- D M Werchan
- Department of Cognitive, Linguistic, and Psychological Sciences, Brown University, Providence, RI, 02912 United States.
| | - D Amso
- Department of Cognitive, Linguistic, and Psychological Sciences, Brown University, Providence, RI, 02912 United States
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6
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Renswoude DR, Visser I, Raijmakers MEJ, Tsang T, Johnson SP. Real‐world scene perception in infants: What factors guide attention allocation? INFANCY 2019; 24:693-717. [DOI: 10.1111/infa.12308] [Citation(s) in RCA: 15] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/28/2018] [Revised: 04/10/2019] [Accepted: 06/03/2019] [Indexed: 11/30/2022]
Affiliation(s)
- Daan R. Renswoude
- Department of Psychology University of Amsterdam Amsterdam The Netherlands
- Research Priority Area YIELD Amsterdam The Netherlands
| | - Ingmar Visser
- Department of Psychology University of Amsterdam Amsterdam The Netherlands
- Research Priority Area YIELD Amsterdam The Netherlands
- Amsterdam Brian and Cognition Center Amsterdam The Netherlands
| | - Maartje E. J. Raijmakers
- Department of Psychology University of Amsterdam Amsterdam The Netherlands
- Research Priority Area YIELD Amsterdam The Netherlands
- Amsterdam Brian and Cognition Center Amsterdam The Netherlands
- Educational Studies & Learn! Free University Amsterdam The Netherlands
| | - Tawny Tsang
- Department of Psychology University of California Los Angeles California
| | - Scott P. Johnson
- Department of Psychology University of California Los Angeles California
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7
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Kelly DJ, Duarte S, Meary D, Bindemann M, Pascalis O. Infants rapidly detect human faces in complex naturalistic visual scenes. Dev Sci 2019; 22:e12829. [PMID: 30896078 DOI: 10.1111/desc.12829] [Citation(s) in RCA: 28] [Impact Index Per Article: 5.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/26/2018] [Revised: 03/13/2019] [Accepted: 03/16/2019] [Indexed: 01/23/2023]
Abstract
Infants respond preferentially to faces and face-like stimuli from birth, but past research has typically presented faces in isolation or amongst an artificial array of competing objects. In the current study infants aged 3- to 12-months viewed a series of complex visual scenes; half of the scenes contained a person, the other half did not. Infants rapidly detected and oriented to faces in scenes even when they were not visually salient. Although a clear developmental improvement was observed in face detection and interest, all infants displayed sensitivity to the presence of a person in a scene, by displaying eye movements that differed quantifiably across a range of measures when viewing scenes that either did or did not contain a person. We argue that infant's face detection capabilities are ostensibly "better" with naturalistic stimuli and artificial array presentations used in previous studies have underestimated performance.
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Affiliation(s)
- David J Kelly
- School of Psychology, Keynes College, University of Kent, Canterbury, Kent, UK
| | - Sofia Duarte
- School of Psychology, Keynes College, University of Kent, Canterbury, Kent, UK
| | | | - Markus Bindemann
- School of Psychology, Keynes College, University of Kent, Canterbury, Kent, UK
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8
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van Renswoude DR, van den Berg L, Raijmakers ME, Visser I. Infants’ center bias in free viewing of real-world scenes. Vision Res 2019; 154:44-53. [DOI: 10.1016/j.visres.2018.10.003] [Citation(s) in RCA: 9] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/17/2018] [Revised: 09/29/2018] [Accepted: 10/10/2018] [Indexed: 11/26/2022]
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9
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Mercure E, Quiroz I, Goldberg L, Bowden-Howl H, Coulson K, Gliga T, Filippi R, Bright P, Johnson MH, MacSweeney M. Impact of Language Experience on Attention to Faces in Infancy: Evidence From Unimodal and Bimodal Bilingual Infants. Front Psychol 2018; 9:1943. [PMID: 30459671 PMCID: PMC6232685 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01943] [Citation(s) in RCA: 7] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/29/2018] [Accepted: 09/20/2018] [Indexed: 01/14/2023] Open
Abstract
Faces capture and maintain infants' attention more than other visual stimuli. The present study addresses the impact of early language experience on attention to faces in infancy. It was hypothesized that infants learning two spoken languages (unimodal bilinguals) and hearing infants of Deaf mothers learning British Sign Language and spoken English (bimodal bilinguals) would show enhanced attention to faces compared to monolinguals. The comparison between unimodal and bimodal bilinguals allowed differentiation of the effects of learning two languages, from the effects of increased visual communication in hearing infants of Deaf mothers. Data are presented for two independent samples of infants: Sample 1 included 49 infants between 7 and 10 months (26 monolinguals and 23 unimodal bilinguals), and Sample 2 included 87 infants between 4 and 8 months (32 monolinguals, 25 unimodal bilinguals, and 30 bimodal bilingual infants with a Deaf mother). Eye-tracking was used to analyze infants' visual scanning of complex arrays including a face and four other stimulus categories. Infants from 4 to 10 months (all groups combined) directed their attention to faces faster than to non-face stimuli (i.e., attention capture), directed more fixations to, and looked longer at faces than non-face stimuli (i.e., attention maintenance). Unimodal bilinguals demonstrated increased attention capture and attention maintenance by faces compared to monolinguals. Contrary to predictions, bimodal bilinguals did not differ from monolinguals in attention capture and maintenance by face stimuli. These results are discussed in relation to the language experience of each group and the close association between face processing and language development in social communication.
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Affiliation(s)
- Evelyne Mercure
- Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, London, United Kingdom
| | - Isabel Quiroz
- Centre for Brain and Cognitive Development, Birkbeck, University of London, London, United Kingdom
| | - Laura Goldberg
- Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, London, United Kingdom
| | - Harriet Bowden-Howl
- Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, London, United Kingdom
- School of Psychology, University of Plymouth, Plymouth, United Kingdom
| | - Kimberley Coulson
- Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, London, United Kingdom
- Department of Psychology and Sports Sciences, University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield, United Kingdom
| | - Teodora Gliga
- Centre for Brain and Cognitive Development, Birkbeck, University of London, London, United Kingdom
| | - Roberto Filippi
- Institute of Education, University College London, London, United Kingdom
| | - Peter Bright
- Department of Psychology, Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, United Kingdom
| | - Mark H. Johnson
- Centre for Brain and Cognitive Development, Birkbeck, University of London, London, United Kingdom
- Department of Psychology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom
| | - Mairéad MacSweeney
- Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, London, United Kingdom
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10
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Mahdi A, Su M, Schlesinger M, Qin J. A Comparison Study of Saliency Models for Fixation Prediction on Infants and Adults. IEEE Trans Cogn Dev Syst 2018. [DOI: 10.1109/tcds.2017.2696439] [Citation(s) in RCA: 15] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/09/2022]
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11
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Kayhan E, Gredebäck G, Lindskog M. Infants Distinguish Between Two Events Based on Their Relative Likelihood. Child Dev 2017; 89:e507-e519. [PMID: 28972270 DOI: 10.1111/cdev.12970] [Citation(s) in RCA: 6] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.9] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/29/2022]
Abstract
Likelihood estimations are crucial for dealing with the uncertainty of life. Here, infants' sensitivity to the difference in likelihood between two events was investigated. Infants aged 6, 12, and 18 months (N = 75) were shown animated movies of a machine simultaneously drawing likely and unlikely samples from a box filled with different colored balls. In different trials, the difference in likelihood between the two samples was manipulated. The infants' looking patterns varied as a function of the magnitude of the difference in likelihood and were modulated by the number of items in the samples. Looking patterns showed qualitative similarities across age groups. This study demonstrates that infants' looking responses are sensitive to the magnitude of the difference in likelihood between two events.
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Affiliation(s)
- Ezgi Kayhan
- Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences.,Radboud University Nijmegen
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12
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Kwon MK, Setoodehnia M, Baek J, Luck SJ, Oakes LM. The development of visual search in infancy: Attention to faces versus salience. Dev Psychol 2016; 52:537-55. [PMID: 26866728 PMCID: PMC4808329 DOI: 10.1037/dev0000080] [Citation(s) in RCA: 51] [Impact Index Per Article: 6.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/08/2022]
Abstract
Four experiments examined how faces compete with physically salient stimuli for the control of attention in 4-, 6-, and 8-month-old infants (N = 117 total). Three computational models were used to quantify physical salience. We presented infants with visual search arrays containing a face and familiar object(s), such as shoes and flowers. Six- and 8-month-old infants looked first and longest at faces; their looking was not strongly influenced by physical salience. In contrast, 4-month-old infants showed a visual preference for the face only when the arrays contained 2 items and the competitor was relatively low in salience. When the arrays contained many items or the only competitor was relatively high in salience, 4-month-old infants' looks were more often directed at the most salient item. Thus, over ages of 4 to 8 months, physical salience has a decreasing influence and faces have an increasing influence on where and how long infants look.
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Affiliation(s)
| | | | | | - Steven J Luck
- Center for Mind and Brain, University of California, Davis
| | - Lisa M Oakes
- Center for Mind and Brain, University of California, Davis
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13
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de Diego-Balaguer R, Martinez-Alvarez A, Pons F. Temporal Attention as a Scaffold for Language Development. Front Psychol 2016; 7:44. [PMID: 26869953 PMCID: PMC4735410 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00044] [Citation(s) in RCA: 49] [Impact Index Per Article: 6.1] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/15/2015] [Accepted: 01/11/2016] [Indexed: 11/16/2022] Open
Abstract
Language is one of the most fascinating abilities that humans possess. Infants demonstrate an amazing repertoire of linguistic abilities from very early on and reach an adult-like form incredibly fast. However, language is not acquired all at once but in an incremental fashion. In this article we propose that the attentional system may be one of the sources for this developmental trajectory in language acquisition. At birth, infants are endowed with an attentional system fully driven by salient stimuli in their environment, such as prosodic information (e.g., rhythm or pitch). Early stages of language acquisition could benefit from this readily available, stimulus-driven attention to simplify the complex speech input and allow word segmentation. At later stages of development, infants are progressively able to selectively attend to specific elements while disregarding others. This attentional ability could allow them to learn distant non-adjacent rules needed for morphosyntactic acquisition. Because non-adjacent dependencies occur at distant moments in time, learning these dependencies may require correctly orienting attention in the temporal domain. Here, we gather evidence uncovering the intimate relationship between the development of attention and language. We aim to provide a novel approach to human development, bridging together temporal attention and language acquisition.
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Affiliation(s)
- Ruth de Diego-Balaguer
- Institució Catalana de Recerca i Estudis AvançatsBarcelona, Spain
- Cognition and Brain Plasticity Unit, Institut d’Investigació Biomèdica de BellvitgeBarcelona, Spain
- Department of Basic Psychology, University of BarcelonaBarcelona, Spain
| | - Anna Martinez-Alvarez
- Cognition and Brain Plasticity Unit, Institut d’Investigació Biomèdica de BellvitgeBarcelona, Spain
- Department of Basic Psychology, University of BarcelonaBarcelona, Spain
| | - Ferran Pons
- Department of Basic Psychology, University of BarcelonaBarcelona, Spain
- Department of Basic Psychology, Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behavior (IR3C), University of BarcelonaBarcelona, Spain
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14
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Delle Luche C, Durrant S, Poltrock S, Floccia C. A methodological investigation of the Intermodal Preferential Looking paradigm: Methods of analyses, picture selection and data rejection criteria. Infant Behav Dev 2015; 40:151-72. [PMID: 26176183 DOI: 10.1016/j.infbeh.2015.05.005] [Citation(s) in RCA: 30] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/18/2014] [Revised: 05/26/2015] [Accepted: 05/30/2015] [Indexed: 10/23/2022]
Abstract
The Intermodal Preferential Looking paradigm provides a sensitive measure of a child's online word comprehension. To complement existing recommendations (Fernald, Zangl, Portillo, & Marchman, 2008), the present study evaluates the impact of experimental noise generated by two aspects of the visual stimuli on the robustness of familiar word recognition with and without mispronunciations: the presence of a central fixation point and the level of visual noise in the pictures (as measured by luminance saliency). Twenty-month-old infants were presented with a classic word recognition IPL procedure in 3 conditions: without a fixation stimulus (No Fixation - noisiest condition), with a fixation stimulus before trial onset (Fixation, intermediate), and with a fixation stimulus, a neutral background and equally salient images (Fixation Plus - least noisy). Data were systematically analyzed considering a range of data selection criteria and dependent variables (proportion of looking time towards the target, longest look, and time-course analysis). Critically, the expected pronunciation and naming interaction was only found in the Fixation Plus condition. We discuss the impact of data selection criteria and the dependent variable choice on the modulation of these effects across the different conditions.
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Affiliation(s)
- Claire Delle Luche
- Department of Languages and Linguistics, University of Essex, United Kingdom.
| | | | - Silvana Poltrock
- Université Paris Descartes, Sorbonne Paris Cité, Paris, France; CNRS, Laboratoire Psychologie de la Perception, UMR 8158, Paris, France
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15
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Galazka M, Nyström P. Visual Attention to Dynamic Spatial Relations in Infants and Adults. INFANCY 2015. [DOI: 10.1111/infa.12091] [Citation(s) in RCA: 10] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.1] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/28/2022]
Affiliation(s)
- Martyna Galazka
- Uppsala Child and Baby Lab; Department of Psychology; Uppsala University
| | - Pär Nyström
- Uppsala Child and Baby Lab; Department of Psychology; Uppsala University
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16
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Onat S, Açık A, Schumann F, König P. The contributions of image content and behavioral relevancy to overt attention. PLoS One 2014; 9:e93254. [PMID: 24736751 PMCID: PMC3988016 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0093254] [Citation(s) in RCA: 24] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/08/2013] [Accepted: 03/04/2014] [Indexed: 11/19/2022] Open
Abstract
During free-viewing of natural scenes, eye movements are guided by bottom-up factors inherent to the stimulus, as well as top-down factors inherent to the observer. The question of how these two different sources of information interact and contribute to fixation behavior has recently received a lot of attention. Here, a battery of 15 visual stimulus features was used to quantify the contribution of stimulus properties during free-viewing of 4 different categories of images (Natural, Urban, Fractal and Pink Noise). Behaviorally relevant information was estimated in the form of topographical interestingness maps by asking an independent set of subjects to click at image regions that they subjectively found most interesting. Using a Bayesian scheme, we computed saliency functions that described the probability of a given feature to be fixated. In the case of stimulus features, the precise shape of the saliency functions was strongly dependent upon image category and overall the saliency associated with these features was generally weak. When testing multiple features jointly, a linear additive integration model of individual saliencies performed satisfactorily. We found that the saliency associated with interesting locations was much higher than any low-level image feature and any pair-wise combination thereof. Furthermore, the low-level image features were found to be maximally salient at those locations that had already high interestingness ratings. Temporal analysis showed that regions with high interestingness ratings were fixated as early as the third fixation following stimulus onset. Paralleling these findings, fixation durations were found to be dependent mainly on interestingness ratings and to a lesser extent on the low-level image features. Our results suggest that both low- and high-level sources of information play a significant role during exploration of complex scenes with behaviorally relevant information being more effective compared to stimulus features.
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Affiliation(s)
- Selim Onat
- Institute of Cognitive Science, University of Osnabrück, Osnabrück, Germany
- * E-mail:
| | - Alper Açık
- Institute of Cognitive Science, University of Osnabrück, Osnabrück, Germany
| | - Frank Schumann
- Institute of Cognitive Science, University of Osnabrück, Osnabrück, Germany
| | - Peter König
- Institute of Cognitive Science, University of Osnabrück, Osnabrück, Germany
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17
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Tummeltshammer KS, Mareschal D, Kirkham NZ. Infants' selective attention to reliable visual cues in the presence of salient distractors. Child Dev 2014; 85:1981-94. [PMID: 24646174 DOI: 10.1111/cdev.12239] [Citation(s) in RCA: 22] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/27/2022]
Abstract
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 relation. While 8-month-olds showed evidence of increasingly selective attention toward the predictive cues, even when the distractors were highly salient, 6-month-olds shifted attention toward the predictive cues only when the distractors were equally (not more) engaging. These experiments suggest that attention in infancy is highly dependent on the relative weightings of predictiveness and visual salience, which may differ across development and context.
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18
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Amso D, Haas S, Markant J. An eye tracking investigation of developmental change in bottom-up attention orienting to faces in cluttered natural scenes. PLoS One 2014; 9:e85701. [PMID: 24465653 PMCID: PMC3899069 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0085701] [Citation(s) in RCA: 71] [Impact Index Per Article: 7.1] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/05/2013] [Accepted: 12/05/2013] [Indexed: 01/13/2023] Open
Abstract
This study examined the contribution of visual salience to bottom-up attention orienting to faces in cluttered natural scenes across development. We eye tracked participants 4 months to 24 years of age as they freely viewed 16 natural scenes, all of which had faces in them. In half, the face was also the winner-take-all salient area in the display as determined by the MATLAB SaliencyToolbox. In the other half, a random location was the winner-take-all salient area in the display and the face was visually non-salient. We found that proportion of attended faces, in the first second of scene viewing, improved after the first year. Visually salient faces attracted bottom-up attention orienting more than non-salient faces reliably and robustly only after infancy. Preliminary data indicate that this shift to use of visual salience to guide bottom-up attention orienting after infancy may be a function of stabilization of visual skills. Moreover, sociodemographic factors including number of siblings in the home and family income were agents of developmental change in orienting to faces in cluttered natural scenes in infancy.
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Affiliation(s)
- Dima Amso
- Department of Cognitive, Linguistic, & Psychological Sciences, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, United States of America
| | - Sara Haas
- Department of Cognitive, Linguistic, & Psychological Sciences, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, United States of America
| | - Julie Markant
- Department of Cognitive, Linguistic, & Psychological Sciences, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, United States of America
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