2-104 - Infant Attention and Face Learning: Insights from Measures of Brain and Behavior

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

Attention capacities are available from birth and are thought to support the development of perceptual and cognitive abilities. However, we still know very little about how attention drives early learning, what aspects of the environment are important for early learning, how attentional capacities change across development, and how the brain supports early attention and results in perceptual learning. Here, we examine the mechanisms underlying the development of attention to faces using innovative electrophysiological and eye-tracking methods. The presentations in this symposium examine 1) how synchronous audiovisual speech enhances neural indices of attention and perceptual learning of amodal information conveyed by faces, 2) the development and neural changes associated with the ability to simultaneously attend to faces and recently learned objects, and 3) visual attentional mechanisms underlying infant’s perception of faces that vary in appearance. Our findings will be discussed in terms of how attention to faces and subsequent learning change across the first year of life and relative to adult capacities. Combined the results of these presentations are expected to increase our understanding of factors that impact infant learning and brain development during first year of life.

Sub Unit

• Attention, Learning, Memory

Chair

• Lisa S Scott, University of Florida

Discussant

• Lisa S Scott, University of Florida

Individual Presentations

• Infant selective attention and perceptual learning of multimodal face stimuli - Presenting Author: Greg D. Reynolds, University of Tennessee; Non-Presenting Author: Lorraine E Bahrick, Florida International University; Non-Presenting Author: Robert Lickliter, Florida International University; Non-Presenting Author: James Torrence Todd, Florida International University; Non-Presenting Author: Kelly Roth, University of Tennessee Knoxville; Non-Presenting Author: William Joseph Chollman, University of Tennessee

• Frequency tagging reveals differential neural responses to overlapping faces and objects in infants and adults - Presenting Author: Ryan Barry-Anwar, University of Florida; Non-Presenting Author: Ethan Kutlu, University of Florida; Non-Presenting Author: Gabriella Silva, University of Florida; Non-Presenting Author: Andreas Keil, University of Florida; Non-Presenting Author: Lisa S Scott, University of Florida

• Perceiving faces in variability: an eye-tracking study in infants - Presenting Author: Xiaomei Zhou, Ryerson University; Non-Presenting Author: Shruti Vyas, Ryerson University; Non-Presenting Author: Margaret Moulson, Ryerson University