Individual differences in infant fixation duration: Dominance of global versus local stimulus properties

Abstract

In three experiments, the dominance of global versus local visual properties was investigated in 4-month-old infants as a function of individual differences in fixation duration (i.e., “long-” versus “short-looking” infants). Dominance was assessed through paired-comparison discrimination tasks in which global and local visual properties were placed in competition with one another for infants' attention. Familiarization time was varied parametrically across experiments. Short-looking infants showed responses consistent with a global-to-local sequence of processing: dominance for the global attribute was supplanted by dominance for the local attribute as familiarization was extended. Long-looking infants, however, did not show dominance for either visual property until after considerable familiarization. When dominance was observed for this group, it was for the local visual attribute. These findings are in accord with previous observations that long-looking infants process visual information more slowly than short-looking infants, but further suggest that there may be qualitative differences in the manner in which the two groups of infants attend to the properties of visual stimuli. Links between this finding and the long-term predictive validity of fixation duration are discussed.