Department of Psychology, University of Heidelberg, Germany.
Br J Dev Psychol. 2013 Jun;31(Pt 2):212-30. doi: 10.1111/bjdp.12001. Epub 2012 Nov 2.
This study investigates the effects of attention-guiding stimuli on 4-month-old infants' object processing. In the human head condition, infants saw a person turning her head and eye gaze towards or away from objects. When presented with the objects again, infants showed increased attention in terms of longer looking time measured by eye tracking and an increased Nc amplitude measured by event-related potentials (ERP) for the previously uncued objects versus the cued objects. This suggests that the uncued objects were previously processed less effectively and appeared more novel to the infants. In a second condition, a car instead of a human head turned towards or away from objects. Eye-tracking results did not reveal any significant difference in infants' looking time. ERPs indicated only a marginally significant effect in late slow-wave activity associated with memory encoding for the uncued objects. We conclude that human head orientation and gaze direction affect infants' object-directed attention, whereas movement and orientation of a car have only limited influence on infants' object processing.
本研究旨在探究引导注意刺激对 4 个月大婴儿物体处理的影响。在人头条件下，婴儿看到一个人转头并将目光注视从物体上移开或转向物体。当再次呈现这些物体时，与引导的物体相比，婴儿通过眼动追踪测量的注视时间更长，与事件相关电位（ERP）测量的 Nc 振幅更大，表明未被引导的物体之前的处理效果较差，对婴儿来说更具新颖性。在第二种情况下，一辆汽车而不是人头转向或远离物体。眼动追踪结果显示，婴儿的注视时间没有明显差异。ERP 仅表明与未被引导的物体的记忆编码相关的晚期慢波活动存在边缘显著效应。我们得出结论，人头的朝向和注视方向会影响婴儿的物体指向注意力，而汽车的运动和朝向对婴儿的物体处理只有有限的影响。
