Abstract
Typically developing individuals show a strong visual preference for faces and face-like stimuli; however, this may come at the expense of attending to bodies or to other aspects of a scene. The primary goal of the present study was to provide additional insight into the development of attentional mechanisms that underlie perception of real people in naturalistic scenes. We examined the looking behaviors of typical children, adolescents, and young adults as they viewed static and dynamic scenes depicting one or more people. Overall, participants showed a bias to attend to faces more than on other parts of the scenes. Adding motion cues led to a reduction in the number, but an increase in the average duration of face fixations in single-character scenes. When multiple characters appeared in a scene, motion-related effects were attenuated and participants shifted their gaze from faces to bodies, or made off-screen glances. Children showed the largest effects related to the introduction of motion cues or additional characters, suggesting that they find dynamic faces difficult to process, and are especially prone to look away from faces when viewing complex social scenes—a strategy that could reduce the cognitive and the affective load imposed by having to divide one's attention between multiple faces. Our findings provide new insights into the typical development of social attention during natural scene viewing, and lay the foundation for future work examining gaze behaviors in typical and atypical development.
Highlights
Developing individuals show a strong visual preference for faces and face-like stimuli (Valenza et al, 1996; Downing et al, 2004; Nummenmaa et al, 2006; Langton et al, 2008)
We examined whether passive viewing behaviors in each age group would be affected by the introduction of motion and/or additional characters in scenes
Despite the fact that the face areas of interest (AOI) were considerably smaller than any other regions, participants made more and longer fixations on faces than on other parts of the displays, which resulted in longer dwell times for faces
Summary
Developing individuals show a strong visual preference for faces and face-like stimuli (Valenza et al, 1996; Downing et al, 2004; Nummenmaa et al, 2006; Langton et al, 2008). Looking away from the mother does not appear to reflect passive disinterest Rather, when they look away, infants show expressions indicative of concentration, as if they were engaging in time-outs from the previous looking period (Field, 1979). Taking these time-outs may reduce infants’ cognitive load by providing them with more time to process the rich information conveyed by moving faces (Glenberg et al, 1998; Doherty-Sneddon et al, 2002). This would be beneficial as infants are naïve perceivers of the world, for whom the processing of most stimuli is challenging and effortful (Bahrick and Lickliter, 2012)
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
