Developmental changes in visual orienting behavior to featural versus structural information in the human infant.

Ten male infants, 3--4 months old, and 10 male infants, 6--7 months old, were habituated to a visual stimulus composed of both specific featural and structural information. After habituation, orienting magnitude (dishabituation) to changes in feature with structure controlled versus changes in structure with feature controlled was used as a means of measuring the infant's processing capacity. Results indicate that younger and older infants were habituated over the habituation trials but that younger and older infants differed significantly in dishabituation to changes in structure and feature information. The present findings support the hypothesis that feature and structure information are both independently important to visual processing in the human infant.