Observing effortful adults enhances not perseverative but sustained attention in infants aged 12 months

Abstract

This study examined how observing adults who persistently focus on particular objects to achieve their goals can modulate infants’ subsequent attention in the looking version of the A-not-B task. A total of 100 infants aged 12 months were assigned to one of the following three conditions: Effort (a model achieving a goal with effort), No-Effort (a model achieving a goal effortlessly), and Baseline (no stimulus presented). The results indicate that infants in the Effort condition were more likely to sustain goal-directed attention to overall targets over consecutive trials than infants in other conditions. In addition, no group differences were found in perseverative attention toward a previous target between the Effort and No-Effort conditions, whereas these infants were less likely to perseverate toward a previous target than those in the Baseline condition. These results suggest that observing effortful behavior may enhance and foster not perseverative but sustained goal-directed attention in infants across contexts.