Preferential looking: a sudden shift in visual fixation pattern at 32 months of age.
Observations of eye movements of young children in a modified preferential looking task suggest a change in the visual looking pattern taking place during a very brief time between 32 and 33 months of age. In the younger children, a grating stimulus elicited eye movements towards the target followed by a few seconds of focused attention; in the older children a visual avoidance behavior was observed where subjects looked consistently in the opposite direction of the target. An analysis of video recordings suggests that this avoidance pattern was a composite of a very brief initial target-directed eye movement which was quickly arrested, and followed by eye movements in the opposite direction, initiating a search of the visual scene.
D001288:Attention; D002657:Child Development; D002675:Child, Preschool; D005133:Eye Movements; D005260:Female; D005403:Fixation, Ocular; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009949:Orientation; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D012016:Reference Values