Looking and Visual Attention: Overview and Developmental Framework

1
Looking and Visual AttentionOverview and
Developmental Framework

• Report by alangarnet

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Goals of this chapter

• Provide a broad outline of issues to be discussed
  in more detail in the following chapters.
• Cast these issues in a framework of early
  development
• Emphasize four major developmental transitions
• These transitions are important in understanding
  the two major attention systems
• Earlier maturing system
• orienting and investigation of locations and
  objects
• Later maturing system
• goal oriented attention and the control of
  complex activity.

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Looking in newborn

• First two month of life only 11-19 alert
• Neither random nor confused organized and
  selective
• Select looking preferences
• patterned stimulation gt plain fields of color.
• Patterns composed of curved gt straight lines.
• Figure3.1 Infant tend to look more at patterns
  and objects that have large features and high
  contrast .
• Scanning
• Able to track moving objects although not
  smooth and lag
• Selectively look at moving prototypical human
  faces.
• Figure3.2 tend to scan the external contours of
  stationary objects, and restrict their scanning
  to small sections of the contours.
• Disengage attention
• Have trouble looking away from a highly salient
  object once their attention has been engaged.

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The transition at 2-3 months

• Spend much time awake and looking around.
• Select
• After 2 Mo more likely to select particular
  object, regardless of whether they are larger or
  brighter.figure3.3
• Scanning
• 2-3Mo visually follow objects more readily
• Include the internal as well as the external
  contours and more widely distributed. Figure3.2
• After 3Mo obligatory looking seems to diminish
  and infants begin to disengage their looking more
  readily.
• The time infants spend looking at interesting
  objects during alert periods increases from birth
  to 3 months Figure3.4

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Social implications of the 2-to 3-Mo shift

• Face to face play
• Before 2 Mo, some times fail to establish eye
  contact , often looking to the hairline or the
  edge of the face.(2 Mo 24of the time - dull)
• after 2 Mo, more like to make eye contact, thus
  to select and invite the social partner to
  interact. (3 Mo dull looking drop to 8)
• The duration of social looking increases over the
  first few months, as it does for static
  patterns.Figure3.4
• The long obligatory looking of the infant into
  the eyes of the parent might be seen by the
  parent as a sign of attachment.figure3.5
• 6months
• The transition marks
• The development of attachment
• Mutual regulation of attention in face to face
  interaction.

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Processes underlying the transition at 2 to 3
Months

• See better because the maturation of the visual
  system (Retina)
• Maturation of cells and connections in the visual
  pathway to the cortex change the basis for
  discrimination and selecting among object.
• 2Movisual orienting and attention are governed
  by different processes
• Newbornsubcortical mechanism
• 2-3Moshift to cortical control
• Visual orienting or selecting begin to be
  determined more by attention (begin to coordinate
  with attention)
• More details , see ch4,5(selectivity) and
  ch6(state)

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Looking and the development of the first
attention system

• 3-9Mo
• deploy their attention more flexibly and are
  influenced more readily by experience. figure3.6
• Learn to visually recognize more complex events
  than younger infants.
• Attention shift from primary involvement with the
  parent to the world of objects
• 5 Mo begin to reach grasp, and manipulate
  objects that engage their visual attention
• 9 Mo highly proficient at manipulative , visual
  exploration of novel objects
• Share attention important for both social and
  cognitive development.
• The incorporation of objects into social
  interactions promotes shared attention to
  objects.

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Looking and the development of the first
attention system-2

• First attention system composed by
• Orienting network where
• Supported by a network in the posterior parietal
  cortex in conjunction with several subcortical
  systems.
• Involves a number of processes disengagement,
  shifting , and inhibition of return.
• Object recognition network what
• Involves the pathway from the primary visual
  cortex to the inferior temporal cortex.
• These two networks development in different rates
• parietal orienting network maturing before
  temporal Object recognition network.
• The coordination of these two networks supports
  the functioning of the orienting/investigative
  system.

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The transition at 9 to 12 months -Developmental
change in looking

• Static displays decrease Figure3.6,Figure3.7
• Part due to faster learning and habituation.
• Manipulative play with toys/objects
• Single object --older infants looks less, but
  Complex object --older infants look longer.
• Several objects increase. Figure3.8
• Important social implication changes
• social referencing visual reference their
  parents when they encounter ambiguous situations.
• occurs at the same time-- fear of strangers
  some behavior inhibition to novelty or challenge.
• Share attention share attention to toys/objects
  with adults.
• between 9-12Mo, more likely to comply with
  mothers instruction, imitate mothers actions,
  attract mother to a toy of their chossing.

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The transition at 9 to 12 months -Changes in
other domains

• Development of memory and action control (such
  as crawling ).
• 9Mo -delay imitate others action ,Solve simple
  means-ends problems.
• 12Mo-solve means-ends problems consisting of
  several steps. (need to despite delay and
  obstacle to attend the goal)
• Emerging intentionality of action as goals are
  kept briefly in mind, and employ a variety of
  means to attain them.
• The infant is now developing a mind of its own

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Process underlying the transition around 9 months

• Emerging motor skill crawling
• Infants attend to new aspects of both the
  physical and social environment
• New advances in memory and cognition
• When looking at objects discrepant from their
  experience, Ex.Figure3.9
• Young infant look only long enough to recognize
  that and object is part of an already experienced
  category of events.
• Older infant begin to generate hypotheses about
  what they see, especially when current displays
  conflict with previous experiences.
• Figure3.7,duration of looking increasesbecause
  more aware of the discrepancies, and attempt to
  resolve or understand that.
• Emergence of some inhibition of actions that are
  strongly or immediately elicited by the
  situation.
• A not B errornot simply fail to remember the
  correct location, but fail to inhibit the primed
  response.
• Development of dorsolateral prefrontal cortex .
  
• Success of A not B error

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Consolidation of the second attention system and
the transition at 18 months

• Developments in patterns of looking
• Looking at complex visual displaysincrease
  Figure3.10
• looking during play with toys continues to
  increase after 12Mo, Figure3.11
• Figure3.7 ,Figure3.11 Strongly suggests a direct
  relationship between age and how long visual
  attention is sustained.
• By the end of first begin to combine objects,
  and more and more complex.
• 18-24Mo
• Language comprehension is sufficient to
  understand when others use words to direct their
  attention.
• Skilled at following the glances and points of
  others.
• Use all these sources as information and as
  motivation to shift the direction of their
  looking.
• Control the selectivity of others by pointing and
  vocalizing themselves, and by checking to see
  whether other people are following their lead.

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The 18 month Transition

• Increase in comprehension and complexity of
  activity could be seen as a gradual accumulation
  of skills that influence visual attention.
• Qualitative changes may underlie the emergence of
  new attentional skills not observable in looking
  alone.
• Naming spurt a sharp increase in labeling object
• Piaget(1952) links the development of language to
  the underlying emergence of symbolic functioning.
• Pretend play
• Has some capacity to represent absent objects and
  events
• Better able to anticipate future consequences and
  to plan ahead.
• Self- referential ability
• Identify themselves in mirror images, have a
  sense of self
• Begin to take pleasure in producing particular
  out comes for themselves (Ex. putting a puzzle
  together)
• Have a greater awareness of the extent to which
  of their own behavior meets external standards.

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Processes underlying the 18 month transition

• The ability to anticipate outcomes means that
  anticipations can influence action.
• We now see greater inhibitory control over
  current and future action by symbolic and
  specifically linguistic means.
• The frontal cortex is undergoing further
  development in the 18-24 month period.
• Performance on tasks of delayed nonmatching
  improves dramatically between 18-21Mo
• Must learn only novel object are rewarded, and
  must inhibit a natural tendency to respond to the
  previously reinforced object
• Overman(1990) inferior prefrontal cortex is
  important to this task.
• The ability to act on the basis of represented,
  rather than present, information, such as verbal
  instruction from self or others , may be related
  to the maturation of other parts of the frontal
  cortex
• The frontal cortex is a complicated system with
  components that mature at different rates.
• Continuing maturation new experiences the
  emergence of new forms of motivationleads to
  further changes in the second attention system
  during the preschool years.

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The preschool and increasing control of attention

• 2-5 y/o
• Consolidation of skills and gradual accumulation
  of knowledge.
• Improved ability to plan ahead ,engage in complex
  activity
• Change in motivation and enhanced self- control
• Behavioral evidence
• Levy(1980)
• Press button, when x appeared in a stream of
  letters.
• 27 of 3-3.5 y/o, 100 of 4.5 y/o can comply
  with all of the trials.
• Need to control their looking and regulating
  behavior on demand.
• Ruff(1995), table 3.1

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Processes underlying development from 2 5 years

• maturation of the frontal cortex.
• Important for inhibition of motor activity,
  organization of complex and sequential activity.
• 4 y/o transition
• Increases in inhibitory control (Reed..,1984)
• Table3.1,3.5-4.5y/o looking away, response time
  ,errors of omission all improved from 40-85
• Change in attentional and behavioral control
• The vigilance network involving right frontal
  pathway
• Important point in neurological development
• Synaptic connections in some frontal areas reach
  a peak between 3-5y/o

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summary

• 2-3Mo
• obligatory attention-gtmore sensitive to novelty
• Looking at station display
• 0-3Mo-gt increase
• 3-12Mo-gtdecrease
• 5-12M-objcet add into social interaction
• 9-12Mo
• The development of dorsolateral prefrontal
  cortex, memory, action
• development of intentionthe emergence of the
  second attention system.
• 18-24Mo
• Development of representation, language,
  symbolic, sense of self.
• Plan ahead, modulate their behavior in accordance
  with plan.
• 4y/o
• Voluntarily direct attention to present task,
  regulate action, inhibit response to perceptually
  salient.
• Inhibit action on instruction from self or
  others.

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The end of chapter 3
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Figure3.1
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Figure3.2
1Mo
2Mo
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Figure 3.3

• First 2Mo, looking at the ?
• Bigger brighter
• After 2Mo, looking at the small area.

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Figure 3.4

• Dashed line face, checker-board, and other
  high-contrast patterns.
• Solid line looking at adult during interaction.
• Duration of looking time Increasing with age.

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Figure 3.5
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Figure 3.6

• during familiarization and habituation.
• liner decrease in the amount of looking devoted
  to visual displays.
• Possibly because learn such displays more and
  more quickly

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Figure 3.7

• Solid squares and crosses.
• Lewis(1969)
• Flashing lights slides of colored curved line
  segments.
• Asterisks
• Kagan(1971)
• Three dimensional faces.
• 3-13Mosteady decrease in looking
• The dip in looking and the subsequent increase
  are due to these advances in memory and
  cognition.

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Figure 3.8

• Ruff et(1993)
• 97Mo floor play 5 mins
• 9Mo looking at toysgt7Mo
• Bakeman(1984)
• 6-18Mo home floor play 10 mins
• Looking at toys increasing with age.

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Figure 3.9
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Figure 3.10

• TV watching
• Aserisks
• Ruff(1989)
• 2.5-4.5 y/o
• Home
• video tape of puppet skits.
• Crosses
• Anderson(1976)
• 12-48Mo
• lab
• Sesame Street
• Looking duration increase with age

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Figure3.11

• Squares
• Ruff(1990)
• 30-54Mo
• 10 mins free play
• 30-42 Mo looking time increase
• asterisks
• Krakow(1982)
• 12-30 Mo
• 6 mins free play with toys
• Looking time increase
• Overall level of looking high!!!
• a situation or set of toys that would always lead
  to more attention 2y/o than 4y/o,

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Table 3.1

• PSFP
• largest difference on 2.5-3.5y/o
• focused attention (double)
• RT task
• largest difference on 3.5-4.5y/o
• looking away, omissions, away from taskdecrease
  with age
• Motivation like please the adult or achieve
  self-imposed standard become import.
• All situation
• Less physically active