The Selectivity of Motion-Driven Visual Attention in Infants

Abstract

The onset of motion was used to study stimulus-driven visual attention in 14-week-olds. The movement of an object did not capture attention reflexively at 14 weeks of age. The attention-getting properties of a moving stimulus depended significantly on its color in combination with the colors of other objects in the visual field. Specifically, detection of a green moving target was masked in the presence of mixed red and green static objects. No such masking was observed when the moving target was red or when the green target moved in a visual field that was populated only with green objects. The same effect was observed to a lesser extent when the green bars were replaced with gray bars. The number of distractors in the visual field exerted an effect on the accuracy of detection only when their appearance in the visual field was coincident with the onset of target motion. Attention to motion at this age is not independent of the structure of the visual field; chromatic preferences play a role in how readily infants attend to a moving object. These effects may be mediated by a difficulty in disengaging attention (from distractors) or in suppressing attention to competing objects once attention is engaged on a target.