title: Eye movement patterns and visual attention during scene viewing in 3- to 12-month-olds.
abstract: Recently, two attentional modes have been associated with specific eye movement patterns during scene processing. Ambient mode, characterized by short fixations and long saccades during early scene inspection, is associated with localization of objects. Focal mode, characterized by longer fixations, is associated with more detailed object feature processing during later inspection phase. The aim of the present study was to investigate the development of these attentional modes. More specifically, we examined whether indications of ambient and focal attention modes are similar in infants and adults. Therefore, we measured eye movements in 3- to 12-months-old infants while exploring visual scenes. Our results show that both adults and 12-month-olds had shorter fixation durations within the first 1.5 s of scene viewing compared with later time phases (>2.5 s); indicating that there was a transition from ambient to focal processing during image inspection. In younger infants, fixation durations between two viewing phases did not differ. Our results suggest that at the end of the first year of life, infants have developed an adult-like scene viewing behavior. The evidence for the existence of distinct attentional processing mechanisms during early infancy furthermore underlines the importance of the concept of the two modes.
authors.affiliation: Laboratoire Psychologie de la Perception,Université Paris Descartes,Paris,France.
authors.forename: Andrea
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Helo
authors.affiliation: Laboratoire Psychologie de la Perception,Université Paris Descartes,Paris,France.
authors.forename: Pia
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Rämä
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Engineering Psychology and Applied Cognitive Research,Technische Universitaet Dresden,Dresden,Germany.
authors.forename: Sebastian
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Pannasch
authors.affiliation: Laboratoire de Psychologie et NeuroCognition,Université Grenoble Alpes, CNRS,Grenoble,France.
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Meary
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D005403:Fixation, Ocular / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011930:Reaction Time; D012438:Saccades / Q000502:physiology*; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Ambient and focal processing; Eye movements; Infants; Scene perception; Visual development