Attentional control in infancy has been postulated as foundational for self-regulation later in life. However, the empirical evidence supporting this claim is inconsistent. In the current study, we examined the longitudinal data from a sample of Swedish infants (6, 10, and 18 months, n = 118, 59 boys) across a broad set of eye-tracking tasks to…

We tested 6- and 8-month-old White and non-White infants (N = 53 total, 28 girls) from Northern California in a visual search task to determine whether a unique item in an otherwise homogeneous display (a singleton) attracts attention because it is a unique singleton and "pops out" in a categorical manner, or whether attention instead…

Presenting pictures of faces side by side is a common paradigm to assess infants' attentional biases according to social categories, such as gender, race, and language. However, seeing static faces does not represent infants' typical experience of the social world, which involves people in motion and performing actions. Here, we assessed infants'…

Real-time attention coordination in parent-toddler dyads is often studied in tightly controlled laboratory settings. These studies have demonstrated the importance of joint attention in scaffolding the development of attention and the types of dyadic behaviors that support early language learning. Little is known about how often these behaviors…

Visual attention in complex, dynamic scenes is attracted to locations that contain socially relevant features, such as faces, and to areas that are visually salient. Previous work suggests that there is a "global shift" over development such that observers increasingly attend to faces with age. However, no prior work has tested whether…

Paying attention is a critical first step toward learning. For children in primary school classrooms there can be many things to attend to other than the focus of a lesson, such as visual displays on classroom walls. The aim of this study was to use eye-tracking techniques to explore the impact of visual displays on attention and learning for…

There have been long-standing differences of opinion regarding the influence of the face relative to that of contextual information on how individuals process and judge facial expressions of emotion. However, developmental changes in how individuals use such information have remained largely unexplored and could be informative in attempting to…

Previous research has suggested that early development may be an optimal period to implement cognitive training interventions, particularly those relating to attention control, a basic ability that is essential for the development of other cognitive skills. In the present study, we administered gaze-contingent training (95 min across 2 weeks)…

We assessed the eye-movements of 4-month-old infants (N = 38) as they visually inspected pairs of images of cats or dogs. In general, infants who had previous experience with pets exhibited more sophisticated inspection than did infants without pet experience, both directing more visual attention to the informative head regions of the animals,…

This study examined 4- and 5-year-olds' ability to spontaneously use the relative duration and frequency of another's object-directed gaze for inferring that person's preference. In Experiment 1, analysis revealed a strong age effect for judgment accuracy, which could not be accounted for by cue-monitoring proficiency. Reducing the saliency of the…

The present study was conducted to examine the development of attentional and oculomotor control. More specifically, the authors were interested in the development of the ability to inhibit an incorrect but prepotent response to a salient distractor. Participants, who ranged in age from 8 to 25 years, performed 3 different eye movement tasks: a…

Investigates age differences in selective attention in a coded visual search task where subjects were given different types of information about target location before trial onset. (Author/SS)