Note: When clicking on a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) number, you will be taken to an external site maintained by the publisher.
Some full text articles may not yet be available without a charge during the embargo (administrative interval).
What is a DOI Number?
Some links on this page may take you to non-federal websites. Their policies may differ from this site.
-
ABSTRACT Most studies of developing visual attention are conducted using screen‐based tasks in which infants move their eyes to select where to look. However, real‐world visual exploration entails active movements of both eyes and head to bring relevant areas in view. Thus, relatively little is known about how infants coordinate their eyes and heads to structure their visual experiences. Infants were tested every 3 months from 9 to 24 months while they played with their caregiver and three toys while sitting in a highchair at a table. Infants wore a head‐mounted eye tracker that measured eye movement toward each of the visual targets (caregiver's face and toys) and how targets were oriented within the head‐centered field of view (FOV). With age, infants increasingly aligned novel toys in the center of their head‐centered FOV at the expense of their caregiver's face. Both faces and toys were better centered in view during longer looking events, suggesting that infants of all ages aligned their eyes and head to sustain attention. The bias in infants’ head‐centered FOV could not be accounted for by manual action: Held toys were more poorly centered compared with non‐held toys. We discuss developmental factors—attentional, motoric, cognitive, and social—that may explain why infants increasingly adopted biased viewpoints with age.more » « lessFree, publicly-accessible full text available November 1, 2025
-
How can researchers best measure infants' motor experiences in the home? Body position—whether infants are held, supine, prone, sitting, or upright—is an important developmental experience. However, the standard way of measuring infant body position, video recording by an experimenter in the home, can only capture short instances, may bias measurements, and conflicts with physical distancing guidelines resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. Here, we introduce and validate an alternative method that uses machine learning algorithms to classify infants' body position from a set of wearable inertial sensors. A laboratory study of 15 infants demonstrated that the method was sufficiently accurate to measure individual differences in the time that infants spent in each body position. Two case studies showed the feasibility of applying this method to testing infants in the home using a contactless equipment drop-off procedure.more » « less
An official website of the United States government
