Much of our basic understanding of cognitive and social processes in infancy relies on measures of looking time, and specifically on infants’ visual preference for a novel or familiar stimulus. However, despite being the foundation of many behavioral tasks in infant research, the determinants of infants’ visual preferences are poorly understood, and differences in the expression of preferences can be difficult to interpret. In this large-scale study, we test predictions from the Hunter and Ames model of infants' visual preferences. We investigate the effects of three factors predicted by this model to determine infants’ preference for novel versus familiar stimuli: age, stimulus familiarity, and stimulus complexity. Drawing from a large and diverse sample of infant participants (N = XX), this study will provide crucial empirical evidence for a robust and generalizable model of infant visual preferences, leading to a more solid theoretical foundation for understanding the mechanisms that underlie infants’ responses in common behavioral paradigms. Moreover, our findings will guide future studies that rely on infants' visual preferences to measure cognitive and social processes.
The COVID-19 pandemic had relevant psychological effects on the Portuguese population, partially related to repetitive and disruptive thoughts about the disease. Successive lockdowns contributed to an additional burden on parents’ family-work-life balance. This study intends to validate the Portuguese version of the Obsession with COVID-19 Scale (OCS; Lee, 2020), drew upon a general sample from diverse country regions (n = 531) and a specific sample of Portuguese parents (n = 109). Confirmatory factor analysis' results ensure the PT-OCS excellent psychometric properties both for the general sample [X2 (1) = 0.446, p = 0.504; CFI = 1.0; GFI = 1.0; RMSEA = 0.0; Standardized RMR = 0.003] and for the parents’ group [X2 (2) = 1.816, p = 0.403; CFI = 1.0; GFI = 0.99; RMSEA = 0.0; Standardized RMR = 0.016; p Bollen-Stine bootstrap = 0.65]. The scale had very good reliability results (0.84 < α / ⍵ < 0.88). As expected, obsession with COVID-19 was highly correlated with COVID-19 anxiety and women had higher PT-OCS scores. Findings suggest the PT-OCS as a reliable and valid measure to evaluate persistent and disruptive thinking about COVID-19, namely in different groups of the Portuguese population, with potentialities for future epidemic events.
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