Empty Looks or Paying Attention? Exploring Infants' Visual Behavior during Encoding of an Elicited Imitation Task

Abstract

Recently, there has been an increased interest in the relationship between looking time during encoding and subsequent memory performance in imitation tasks. Hitherto, the results have been inconclusive: one line of research supporting the link between looking time and performance and another line finding no relation. The existing studies may, however, have been restricted by using small samples, limited looking time measures, and short retention intervals. We here examined the relationship between the encoding process by means of looking time as well as pupil dilation (by means of eye‐tracking technology) in sixty‐eight 20‐month‐old infants participating in an elicited imitation task and their subsequent memory performance (at an encoding test and at a 2‐week delayed recall test). Additional twenty‐two infants provided baseline measures. Simple looking time (assessed as fixation duration) did not correlate consistently with subsequent memory measures. In some cases, however, looking time correlated negatively with imitation scores. In contrast, positive correlations were found between pupil dilation and some of the memory measures, suggesting that pupil dilation may be a more sensitive tool compared to looking time measures.

Bound to remember: Infants show superior memory for objects presented at event boundaries

“…For instance by focusing on what is happening during the encoding of an event, perhaps with a special focus on the boundaries. In order to investigate whether increased processing occurs during event boundaries one would have to look beyond raw looking time data, given the fact that the relationship between processing and looking time during encoding may not necessarily be linear (e.g., Òturai, Kolling & Knopf, ; Sonne, Kingo & Krøjgaard, ). In addition, future studies should investigate whether these results would replicate using more daily‐life stimuli.…”

Meaningful Memory? Eighteen-Month-Olds Only Remember Cartoons With a Meaningful Storyline

“…As described in the introduction we know that distorted versions of TV shows for kids have an effect on infants’ looking time during encoding ( Anderson et al, 1981 ; Pempek et al, 2010 ), but we do not know whether this affects later memory. Other studies, however, have shown that looking time during the encoding of an event is not necessarily a strong predictor to later memory (e.g., Sonne et al, 2016b ). We therefore wanted to investigate whether our results could be explained by differences in looking time during encoding.…”

The Development of Flexible Problem Solving: An Integrative Approach

“…Another measure that may reveal whether participants are attentively looking at the displayed stimuli is pupil dilation ( Eckstein et al 2017 ). Pupil dilation is modulated by brain structures that control physiological arousal and attention and, as such, can be used as a measure of cognitive effort and task difficulty across problem-solving tasks (e.g., Beatty 1982 ; Boersma et al 1970 ; Chevalier et al 2012 ; Eckstein et al 2017 ; Krøjgaard et al 2020 ; Sonne et al 2016b ), in both children and adults. Increased pupil dilation correlates with increased subjective task difficulty and cognitive effort and has recently been shown in adults during a proactive interference task ( Johansson et al 2018 ), in which goal-relevant information competed with goal-irrelevant information in working memory.…”