Visual Regard of Moving and Stationary Faces in Early Infancy.

Abstract

Many human newborns have the capacity to fixate and follow a moving stimulus visually (Dayton, Jones, Steele, & Rose, 1964; Gor man, Cogan, & Gellis, 1957; Tauber & Koffler, 1966; Wickelgren, 1969), and movement in the visual field has been shown to affect nonverbal behavior (sucking-rate) of the human neonate (Haith, 1966). Furthermore, movement is reported to be important in elicit ing smiles to the human face in older infants (e.g., Polak, Emde, & Spitz, 1964; Spitz & Wolf, 1946; Wolff, 1963) although data compar ing stationary and moving presentations are not given in these papers. Few studies have investigated the effects of stimulus movement on visual response of human infants despite common acceptance that movement in the visual field is attention enhancing for infants (e.g., Gibson, 1969, pp. 345, 382; Rheingold, 1961, p. 167). Results from the few infant experiments involving visual response to moving stimuli generally support the attention-enhancing effect. For example, five-month-old infants showed greater regard of moving over stationary female faces presented as color motion pictures (Wilcox & Clayton, 1968); infants two to four months of age pre ferred a light which changed position within a matrix to one which blinked in one position, although no comparison with a nonblinking light was included (Cohen, 1969). But stimulus movement does not uniformly enhance attention. In testing the effects of speed of vertical movement on infants' visual preference for a moving over stationary target (pairs of checker boards), age-related preference for differing rates of stimulus move ment were found (SiIfen & Ames, 1964). Further, seven-week-olds, the youngest tested, did not show attention differences between