Abstract
Accumulated looking time has been widely used to index violation of expectation (VoE) response in young infants. But there is controversy concerning the validity of this measure, with some interpreting infant looking behaviour in terms of perceptual preferences (Cohen & Marks, 2002; Haith, 1998). The current study aimed to compare the use of looking time with a recently used measure of social looking (Walden et al., 2007) in distinguishing between 6‐month‐old infants’ response to novelty/familiarity and a condition in which the object was covertly switched for a different object. Following habituation, infants showed more social looking in response to the object‐switch condition than the novel object change, whereas the more commonly used accumulated looking time measure did not distinguish between the two, showing an increase for both. Thus, social looking is a more valid measure of infant VoE than looking time.
Highlights
Following the observation that infants repeatedly familiarized to a visual stimulus preferentially look to a novel stimulus (Fantz, 1967), accumulated looking time has been used in habituation paradigms to indicate detection of perceptual novelty
Looking Time Number of Looks positive skew and the presence of zeros in the social looking counts, log transformation was applied to the accumulated looking time and log transformation +1 was applied to the looking data
Recovery of looking occurs both following perceptual novelty and an illegitimate change of object identity and this indicates that this measure does not differentiate between violation of expectation (VoE) and perceptual novelty
Summary
Following the observation that infants repeatedly familiarized to a visual stimulus preferentially look to a novel stimulus (Fantz, 1967), accumulated looking time has been used in habituation paradigms to indicate detection of perceptual novelty. Accumulated looking has been used to measure higher-level understanding, the rationale being that longer looking at events that do not accord with principles of physical reality index violation of the infants’ expectations, and their understanding the principles in question. Such violation of expectation (VoE) tasks have been applied to, among other topics, infants’ knowledge of numeracy (Wynn, 1992; Xu & Carey, 1996) and object permanence (Ahmed & Ruffman, 1998; Baillargeon, 1987; Baillargeon & Graber, 1988; Leslie & Keeble, 1987). The use of, and time exposed to, pre-trials,
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary 
Published Version (
Free)
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.
