Differential sensitivity to species‐ and race‐based information in the development of attention orienting and attention holding face biases in infancy

Abstract

Infants' early experiences drive the development of species-and race-based biases in face processing. These biases reflect changes in infants' selective sustained attention (Fisher, 2019) to faces, which includes attention orienting mechanisms that mediate efficient selection of faces from complex arrays of possible stimuli and attention holding mechanisms that sustain attention to selected faces to allow for detailed processing (e.g., recognition, discrimination; Cohen, 1972; Leppanen, 2016). While extensive research has investigated the development of experience-based biases in infants' attention holding to faces (Quinn, Lee, & Pascalis, 2018; Scott & Fava, 2013), less work has examined parallel biases in attention orienting to faces. The present study directly compared the development of species-and race-based biases in both attention orienting and attention holding to faces within the same infants. We offer novel evidence that attention orienting mechanisms mediating selection of faces are differentially sensitive to species-and racebased information while orienting to faces versus distractors during search may also reflect learning about frequently experienced ownrace faces. Infants show enhanced detection of and preferential looking to face-like stimuli within their first days of life (Valenza, Simion,

Infant negative affectivity and patterns of affect‐biased attention

“…These images included in the current study design include only the faces of White, female actors. Although race‐based biases in attention orienting and attention holding (e.g., preferential looking toward other race faces) are not reliably demonstrated by 6 months of age (Hunter & Markant, 2021; Kelly et al., 2007, 2009; Liu et al., 2015), it is important that future studies include images that are representative of caregivers, especially across later development as by 9 months infants demonstrate greater difficulty discriminating other‐race faces (Kelly et al., 2007, 2009; Markant et al., 2016). Future studies should continue to assess how the race, ethnicity, and gender of actors and infant experiences shape visual exploration of emotion faces and investigate whether these factors moderate any observed associations.…”

Infants’ visual attention to own-race and other-race faces is moderated by experience with people of different races in their daily lives.

“…Similar to prior work on infant looking, we focus on attention holding (i.e., how long infants look at each face) rather than attention orienting (i.e., how long it takes for infants to look at each face; e.g., Hunter & Markant, 2021; Prunty et al, 2020). In order to calculate infants’ attention to own-race and other-race faces, we first calculated the total time (in milliseconds) spent looking at the left and right sides of the screen for each trial.…”

Endogenous Control and Reward-Based Mechanisms Shape Infants’ Attention Biases to Caregiver Faces

“…As the number of distractors (i.e., set size) increases, individuals typically detect the target more slowly or less frequently, reflecting increased competition from the additional irrelevant information (e.g., Gerhardstein & Rovee-Collier, 2002;Wolfe, 2015). An orienting bias towards a specific stimulus can be indexed based on relatively faster or more frequent orienting to one type of target compared to another (e.g., Hunter & Markant, 2021). Developmental researchers have traditionally argued that attention orienting can be driven by perceptual salience or endogenous control (i.e., the ability to engage voluntary selective attention mechanisms to select relevant stimuli while ignoring competing inputs; Colombo, 2001).…”

“…Newborn infants look longer to faces or face-like stimuli compared to non-faces, suggesting an early attention holding bias to faces (Farroni et al, 2005;Morton & Johnson, 1991;Valenza et al, 1996). However, most studies have found that infants do not reliably orient to faces within more complex scenes or arrays until 6 months of age (Di Giorgio et al, 2012;Gliga et al, 2009;Gluckman & Johnson, 2013;Hunter & Markant, 2021;Jakobsen et al, 2016;Kwon et al, 2016;Prunty et al, 2020;Simpson et al, 2020;but see Simpson, Maylott, Leonard, et al, 2019). These increasingly robust orienting biases to faces reflect agerelated improvements in infants' ability to ignore physical salience and resolve visual competition between distractors (e.g., Di Giorgio et al, 2012;Hunter & Markant, 2021;Kwon et al, 2016;.…”