title: Rotary motion impairs attention to color change in 4-month-old infants.
abstract: Continuous color changes of an array of elements appear to stop changing if the array undergoes a coherent motion. This silencing illusion was demonstrated for adults by Suchow and Alvarez (Current Biology, 2011, vol. 21, pp. 140-143). The current forced-choice preferential looking study examined 4-month-old infants' sensitivity to the silencing illusion. Two experimental conditions were conducted. In the dynamic condition, infants were tested with two rotating rings of circular different-colored dots. In one of these rings the dots continuously changed color, whereas in the other ring the dots did not change color. In the static condition, the global rotary motion was eliminated from the targets. Infants preferred looking at the color-changing target in the static condition but not in the dynamic condition; they attended to the color changes in the static condition but failed to detect them in the dynamic condition. This differential looking pattern is consistent with the hypothesis that the silencing illusion can be established during early infancy. A control group of adults also responded to the silencing phenomenon. This substantiates that the stimuli generate a robust illusory effect.
authors.affiliation: Unit of Developmental and Educational Psychology, Department of Psychology, University of Bonn, Bonn, Germany. kavsek@uni-bonn.de
authors.forename: Michael
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Kavšek
mesh_terms: D001288:Attention; D003118:Color Perception; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D008297:Male; D009039:Motion Perception; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D002666:Psychology, Child