Infants’ center bias in free viewing of real-world scenes

Abstract

While distributional learning has been successfully demonstrated for auditory categorization, this study tests whether this mechanism also applies to object categorization: Tenmonth-olds (n = 38) were familiarized with either a unimodal or bimodal distribution of a visual continuum. Using automatic eye tracking, we assessed categorization through the alternating/nonalternating paradigm. For infants in the bimodal condition, their average dwell time was larger for alternating trials than for nonalternating trials, while infants in the unimodal condition initially looked equally long at both types of trials. This group difference suggests that the shape of frequency distribution bears on the number of categories that infants construct from a continuum. Later in test, all infants show this alternating preference. We conclude that categorization is a flexible process, continuously adjusting itself to additional input. For infants, each day is filled with novel information. Being able to categorize proves a vital ability in reducing the diversity in the outside world, as it enables infants to put novel objects into familiar categories (Rosch, 1978). Such "perceptual categorization" (Mandler, 2000) is a prerequisite for word learning, as all exemplars within a basic level category share the same linguistic label (Waxman & Lidz, 2006). How do infants build such categories? Certainly, infants can be guided by top-down knowledge, that is, the linguistic label can shape categorization (e.g.

Associative binding in early childhood: Evidence from a preferential looking paradigm

“…However, more work should be done to determine how these preferences interact with experimental design in order to potentially obscure the capabilities of infants, in particular because central bias is often established in scene viewing paradigms (e.g. van Renswoude et al, ) but has not been as carefully examined in visual paired comparison tasks.…”

“…These findings have been demonstrated in infants as well. For example, van Renswoude, Berg, Raijmakers, and Visser (2019) found that infants focused strongly on centrally located aspects of complex scenes as compared to peripheral aspects. A noteworthy caveat is that the infants showed a weaker central bias when the most salient information in the scene was located to the periphery (van Renswoude et al, 2019).…”

“…For example, van Renswoude, Berg, Raijmakers, and Visser (2019) found that infants focused strongly on centrally located aspects of complex scenes as compared to peripheral aspects. A noteworthy caveat is that the infants showed a weaker central bias when the most salient information in the scene was located to the periphery (van Renswoude et al, 2019). This bias suggests that it is possible that the toddlers in Experiment 1 may have been even more likely to notice the recombined associative information given that the face violating the association was in the center of the screen.…”

“…The tendency to look at central items in Experiment 1 may have obscured toddlers’ ability to fully process or demonstrate retention of item‐item associations. We contrast this prediction with the alternative possibility that toddlers’ ability to notice anything about the violation was facilitated by the placement of the violating item in the central portion of the display where infants and adults tend to preferentially look (ven Renswoude et al, ; Tatler, ). If this is the case, then toddlers should be expected to continue to fail to show a novelty preference in the current experiment, suggesting that item‐item associative processing abilities are not present at this age.…”

Real‐world scene perception in infants: What factors guide attention allocation?

“…They are important in modeling adult eye movements (Foulsham & Kingstone, ), and they predict fixation locations above chance level (Tatler & Vincent, ). Recently, it was shown that infants also demonstrate the horizontal bias (van Renswoude, Johnson, Raijmakers, & Visser, ) and the central bias (van Renswoude et al, ). This indicates that infants, similar to adults, are more likely to fixate central locations and locations along the horizon.…”