This study is the third of three investigating attentional preference in infants. In the second study (PS 003 071), infants gave initial attentional preference to familiar patterns of visual stimuli, and later switched their preference to the unfamiliar, novel stimuli. The purpose of the present study was to duplicate these results with improved…

The human infant is now considered capable of active informational interaction with the environment. This study tested certain hypotheses concerning the nature of that interaction. These hypotheses, developed partly from Piaget's work, are (1) that repeated visual encounters with a stimulus pattern leads first to attentional preference for that…