The present study investigated whether facial expressions modulate visual attention in 7-month-old infants. First, infants' looking duration to individually presented fearful, happy, and novel facial expressions was compared to looking duration to a control stimulus (scrambled face). The face with a novel expression was included to examine the…

Sensitivity to second-order relational information (i.e., spatial relations among features such as the distance between eyes) is a vital part of achieving expertise with face processing. Prior research is unclear on whether infants are sensitive to second-order differences seen in typical human populations. In the current experiments, we examined…

Two experiments compared responses of 5-month-old infants to a live person, the person's photograph, photographs of dissimilar persons, and photographs of similar persons. Results indicated that infants use gross physiognomic features to perceive similarity between live persons and their photographs. (Author/JMB)

Two-month-old infants were examined to determine whether, during localization of peripheral target, step size and number of steps were determined prior to the first saccade in a localizing series. It was found that on the majority of trials, a series of saccades was made toward the target hemifield. (Author/RH)

Reminder cues can impact remembering in infancy in multiple ways. Infants typically show highly specific remembering following a reminder, or reactivation procedure, but in some instances, (such as size perception) have demonstrated an ability to remember when given a cue or prime that differs in certain specific characteristics, relative to the…

An experiment with monochromatic lights is discussed in terms of the selective effects of wavelength on looking time and pleasantness, comparisons of infant and adult data, and differentiation of the selective effects of color category centers and color category boundaries. (JMB)

Two experiments were conducted to demonstrate that human infants 3 months of age perceive color in a normal, trichromatic manner. Results from these studies of the neutral zone and hue discrimination evidence trichromatic vision in infancy and are discussed in the context of their clinical, social, and intellectual implications. (Author/SB)

Findings showed no preference for the color white over the color black, contrary to previous studies. (Author/DLS)

Experiments investigated whether more elements in the upper part of a visual configuration influenced newborns' preference for face-like patterns. Findings indicated that newborns preferred nonface-like stimuli with more upper part elements over nonface-like stimuli with more lower elements, but did not prefer face-like over nonface-like stimuli…

Investigated 5-month-olds' perception of an object whose center was occluded and whose ends were visible only in succession. Found that infants perceived the object as one connected whole when the ends underwent common motion but not when the ends were stationary. Results suggest that infants perceive object unity but not object form. (Author/BC)

Infants respond categorically to color. However, the nature of infants' categorical responding to color is unclear. The current study investigated two issues. First, is infants' categorical responding more absolute than adults' categorical responding? That is, can infants discriminate two stimuli from the same color category? Second, is color…

Infants are not too young to engage in real, useful statistical work. This activity allowed comparisons between distributions of two species of flowers in three different habitats.

This study tested whether 4-month-old infants respond primarily to objects' physical or retinal image sizes. In the study's main experiment, infants were habituated to either a 6-cm-diameter disk at a distance of 18 cm or a 10-cm disk at 50 cm. They were then given 2 test trials in which the 6- and 10-cm disks were presented side by side at a…

Research supported largely by grant HD-02296 from the National Institutes of Health, U.S. Public Health Service.