Freeze-Frame: a new infant inhibition task and its relation to frontal cortex tasks during infancy and early childhood.
The current study investigated a new, easily administered, visual inhibition task for infants termed the Freeze-Frame task. In the new task, 9-month-olds were encouraged to inhibit looks to peripheral distractors. This was done by briefly freezing a central animated stimulus when infants looked to the distractors. Half of the trials presented an engaging central stimulus, and the other half presented a repetitive central stimulus. Three measures of inhibitory function were derived from the task and compared with performance on a set of frontal cortex tasks administered at 9 and 24 months of age. As expected, infants' ability to learn to selectively inhibit looks to the distractors at 9 months predicted performance at 24 months. However, performance differences in the two Freeze-Frame trial types early in the experiment also turned out to be an important predictor. The results are discussed in terms of the validity of the Freeze-Frame task as an early measure of different components of inhibitory function.
Holmboe
Karla
K
Centre for Brain and Cognitive Development, School of Psychology, Birkbeck College, University of London, London WC1E 7HX, UK. k.holmboe@psychology.bbk.ac.uk
Pasco Fearon
R M
RM
Csibra
Gergely
G
Tucker
Leslie A
LA
Johnson
Mark H
MH
D001288:Attention; D002675:Child, Preschool; D005260:Female; D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D005625:Frontal Lobe / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D018730:Infant Behavior; D007266:Inhibition, Psychological; D008297:Male; D010865:Pilot Projects; D013028:Space Perception; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D014743:Videotape Recording