Sheese Brad E, Rothbart Mary K, Posner Michael I, White Lauren K, Fraundorf Scott H
Department of Psychology, Illinois Wesleyan University, Bloomington, IL, United States.
Infant Behav Dev. 2008 Sep;31(3):501-10. doi: 10.1016/j.infbeh.2008.02.001. Epub 2008 Apr 11.
This study investigates early executive attention in infancy by studying the relations between infant sequential looking and other behaviors predictive of later self-regulation. One early marker of executive attention development is anticipatory looking, the act of looking to the location of a target prior to its appearance in that location, a process that involves endogenous control of visual orienting. Previous studies have shown that anticipatory looking is positively related to executive attention as assessed by the ability to resolve spatial conflict in 3-4-year-old children. In the current study, anticipatory looking was positively related to cautious behavioral approach in response to non-threatening novel objects in 6- and 7-month-old infants. This finding and previous findings showing the presence of error detection in infancy are consistent with the hypothesis that there is some degree of executive attention in the first year of life. Anticipatory looking was also related to the frequency of distress, to looking away from disturbing stimuli, and to some self-regulatory behaviors. These results may indicate either early attentional regulation of emotion or close relations between early developing fear and later self-regulation. Overall, the results suggest the presence of rudimentary systems of executive attention in infants and support further studies using anticipatory looking as a measure of individual differences in attention in infancy.
本研究通过探究婴儿顺序注视与其他预测后期自我调节的行为之间的关系，来调查婴儿期早期的执行性注意力。执行性注意力发展的一个早期标志是预期性注视，即在目标出现在某个位置之前看向该位置的行为，这一过程涉及视觉定向的内源性控制。先前的研究表明，预期性注视与执行性注意力呈正相关，这一点通过3至4岁儿童解决空间冲突的能力得以评估。在当前研究中，预期性注视与6至7个月大婴儿面对无威胁性新物体时谨慎的行为方式呈正相关。这一发现以及先前表明婴儿期存在错误检测的研究结果，与生命第一年存在一定程度执行性注意力的假设相一致。预期性注视还与苦恼频率、回避干扰性刺激以及一些自我调节行为有关。这些结果可能表明早期对情绪的注意力调节，或者早期发展的恐惧与后期自我调节之间的密切关系。总体而言，这些结果表明婴儿存在基本的执行性注意力系统，并支持进一步将预期性注视用作测量婴儿期注意力个体差异的研究。
