Infants' visual attention to pattern arrangement and orientation.

When 2 stimuli were presented side by side, 4-5-month-old infants looked longer at a visual target that differed from a previously exposed standard target. This reaction to the discrepant target indicated that infants could detect a change involving the arrangement of the constituent elements and the orientation of the standard pattern. When infants were given the opportunity to view paired targets that were both different from the previously exposed standard, there was no evidence that orientation was a less dimension than pattern arrangement. Instead, the infants' fixation behavior seemed to be a function of the relative discrepancy of the paired test stimuli from the previously exposed standard pattern.