Eye tracking infants: Investigating the role of attention during learning on recognition memory

Abstract

In the present study, eye tracker methodology was used to explore whether there were age-related changes in the focus of infant attention during a learning event and subsequent recognition memory for event features. Six-and 9-month old infants watched a video of an adult demonstrating a sequence of actions with an object while visual attention was recorded using an eye tracker. At both ages, attention was focused primarily on the object and person, with the background attended to for approximately 12% of their viewing time. Recognition memory for the person, object and background from the video was assessed immediately using a Visual Paired Comparison procedure. Despite focusing on the central features while watching the target video, infants showed only limited evidence of recognition memory for the individual components of the event. Taken together, these findings suggest that the early age-related changes in memory performance seen in the literature may not be the result of age-related changes in attentional focus during encoding. AbstractIn the present study, eye tracker methodology was used to explore whether there were agerelated changes in the focus of infant attention during a learning event and subsequent recognition memory for event features. Six-and 9-month old infants watched a video of an adult demonstrating a sequence of actions with an object while visual attention was recorded using an eye tracker. At both ages, attention was focused primarily on the object and person, with the background attended to for approximately 12% of their viewing time. Recognition memory for the person, object and background from the video was assessed immediately using a Visual Paired Comparison procedure. Despite focusing on the central features while watching the target video, infants showed only limited evidence of recognition memory for the individual components of the event. Taken together, these findings suggest that agerelated changes in memory performance during the first year of life are unlikely to be the result of age-related changes in attentional focus during encoding.

Feeling good, searching the bad: Positive priming increases attention and memory for negative stimuli on webpages

“…This result is noteworthy as previous studies either focused solely on the level of mean values or used experimental paradigms that did not incorporate an eye-tracking technique; a congruency on the mean level between attention allocation and subsequent recall of webpage content has been previously reported for animated versus non-animated banner ads on webpages (Hamborg et al, 2012) as well as for personalized versus non-personalized banner ads (Köster, Rüth, Hamborg, & Kaspar, 2014). Some researchers did not find a link between attention and memory (Taylor & Herbert, 2013;Xing & Isaacowitz, 2006). Moreover, some studies investigated attention memory for emotional stimuli in distinct experiments, making correlational analyses impossible (e.g., Fung, Isaacowitz, Lu, & Li, 2010).…”

Infant and adult visual attention during an imitation demonstration

“…When 3- (Bronson, 1991) and 5-month-old infants (Jankowski, Rose, & Feldman, 2001) are familiarized with a static picture, visual recognition for that stimulus is related to short, distributed looking behavior. In contrast, using a video of the well-established puppet imitation task (see also Barr et al, 1996; Barr, Muentener, & Garcia, 2007), Taylor and Herbert (2013) found limited evidence for a relationship between attention during learning, measured using an eye tracker, and visual recognition memory at 6 and 9 months of age. Although imitation studies using the puppet task traditionally involve the experimenter using empty language cues to direct infant’s attention to the target event, the video demonstration in this study was silent, to be consistent with previous eye tracking studies (e.g., Vivanti et al, 2008).…”

“…Furthermore, given that 9-month-old infants are on the cusp of showing increased flexibility in their memory abilities, with considerable individual differences being observed at this age (e.g., Herbert et al, 2006), it is important to assess memory performance when abilities are more robust, later during infancy, or even in adulthood. Second, the only measure of memory obtained by Taylor and Herbert (2013) was infants’ visual recognition for the components of the demonstration video. Prior research has shown that 6-month-old infants may fail to show recognition memory for the puppet following a live demonstration, even though they still exhibit behavioral recall for the target actions that were performed with it (Gross, Hayne, Herbert, & Sowerby, 2002).…”

“…We hypothesized that eye tracking data would show participants’ focus of attention to the person, puppet, and background details change across age (see Amso & Johnson, 2008; Frank et al, 2009; Taylor & Herbert, 2013). Consistent with Taylor and Herbert (2013), we hypothesized that 6- and 9-month-old infants would attend to the person and puppet for similar amounts of time, while still giving some visual attention to the background.…”

“…We hypothesized that eye tracking data would show participants’ focus of attention to the person, puppet, and background details change across age (see Amso & Johnson, 2008; Frank et al, 2009; Taylor & Herbert, 2013). Consistent with Taylor and Herbert (2013), we hypothesized that 6- and 9-month-old infants would attend to the person and puppet for similar amounts of time, while still giving some visual attention to the background. Theoretically, increased attention to the puppet should facilitate infants’ ability to imitate the target actions by enhancing the effectiveness of the puppet as a retrieval cue and decreasing the importance of more peripheral details, like the person and the background (for similar argument, see Taylor & Herbert, 2013).…”