Abstract
When looking for an object, we identify it by selectively focusing our attention to a specific feature, known as feature-based attention. This basic attentional system has been reported in young children; however, little is known of whether infants could use feature-based attention. We have introduced a newly developed anticipation-looking task, where infants learned to direct their attention endogenously to a specific feature based on the learned feature (color or orientation), in 60 preverbal infants aged 7–8 months. We found that preverbal infants aged 7–8 months can direct their attention endogenously to the specific target feature among irrelevant features, thus showing the feature-based attentional selection. Experiment 2 bolstered this finding by demonstrating that infants directed their attention depending on the familiarized feature that belongs to a never-experienced object. These results that infants can form anticipation by color and orientation reflect they could drive their attention through feature-based selection.
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Data availability
The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author, S. T., upon request.
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Acknowledgements
We thank Yusuke Nakashima, Jiale Yang, Yuki Tsuji, Nanako Yamanaka, and Machi Sugai for their assistance with data collection. Special thanks to the infants and their parents for their kindness and cooperation.
Funding
This research was financially supported by Grant-in-Aid for JSPS Fellows (No.19J21422), Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research on Innovative Areas “Construction of the Face-Body Studies in Transcultural Conditions” (No.17H06343) from MEXT, and Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (B) from the JSPS (No.19H01774).
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This study was approved by the ethical committee of Chuo University.
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Communicated by Bill J Yates.
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Tsurumi, S., Kanazawa, S., Yamaguchi, M.K. et al. Infants’ anticipatory eye movements: feature-based attention guides infants’ visual attention. Exp Brain Res 240, 2277–2284 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-022-06428-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-022-06428-1