Tools: Looking

Question 1

Attention: Posner 3 Network Model

Answer 1

1) Altering Network
alerts to something new in the environment
signals to other attention systems to engage
can operate within intrinsic awareness - to block out irrelevant stimuli
phase altertness - when stimuli is salient enough to tell us to shift our attention from one task to another
- largely involuntary and subcortical networks (largely developed at birth and operational during early infancy)

2) Orienting Network
shifts attention to new stimuli
voluntary and involuntary pathways (e.g. voluntary or involuntary eye shifting)
dorsal = voluntary
ventral = involuntary
develops until around 2 years

3) Executive Network
takes in attention and regulates responses to new stimuli
monitors attention network - e.g. if made a mistake by not attending
develops over lifespan - final part

Question 2

Posner’s explicit attention network task

Answer 2

Fixation cross that varies, then a cue that activates alerting systems
Target then comes up, either:
- congruent (e.g. all pointing left)
- incongruent (e.g. one pointing differently - distracting)
- neutral
Make decisions about the stimuli

Question 3

Posner’s explicit attention network task

Answer 3

Fixation cross that varies, then a cue that activates alerting systems
Target then comes up, either:
- congruent (e.g. all pointing left)
- incongruent (e.g. one pointing differently - distracting)
- neutral
Make decisions about the stimuli
Can directly measure reaction time to tell us which network was used

Alerting network - difference for RT to the no cue - RT for double cue

Question 4

Stroop Tests

Answer 4

Test the delay between congruent and incongruent stimuli
Assess inhibitory control
Adjust to use for children by showing images and asking to say incongruent opposite thing to what picture shoes (e.g. say night for sun, day for moon)

Question 5

Dimensional Change Card Sorting task

Answer 5

Teach a colour game where they sort into specific colours
Then swap to sort by shape
How many trial does it take for children to switch to new rule and maintain? Number of mistakes, when they forget …

Question 6

Attention Bias task

Answer 6

Trials where your attention (e.g. a face showing a salient emotion) is focused on, asked to make a decision about that face and position is congruent - faster decision
When position is incongruent, we have to shift our attention, increase in RT
Difference of RT tells the extent of your attentional bias
Can modify to infants by measuring how long it takes for them to shift gaze

Question 7

Development of novelty

Answer 7

2 1/2 - 3 months - infants started shifting pattern to new stimuli - novelty
Very young infants show attention preference to familiarity

Question 8

Implicit measures of attention

Answer 8

Rely on looking behaviour

Question 9

Preferential Looking paradigm

Answer 9

a shift of preference from familiar to novelty
Newborn infants showed preference for grasping condition - already showed preference for the natural/familiar very very young
Older infants show preference for the difference
Infants have a natural side preference - do so by counterbalancing presentation

Question 10

Habituation

Answer 10

Repeated / prolonged presentation to the same stimuli until a response decreases due to familiarity - no longer novel/interesting
Increase in looking time to new goals (reaching for a different object) rather than new path (to reach for the same object)
– more in contrast to their expectation

Question 11

Violation of expectation

Answer 11

Relies on expereince and expectations infants have gained
Habituation is more familiarising to event again/the room
If an infant has a conceptualisation of an event/object - looking time should increase to novel/impossible event - increased attention to understand what happened

Question 11

Violation of expectation

Answer 11

Relies on expereince and expectations infants have gained
Habituation is more familiarising to event again/the room
If an infant has a conceptualisation of an event/object - looking time should increase to novel/impossible event - increased attention to understand what happened

Question 12

Onishi and Baillargeon - violation of exp. + theory of mind

Answer 12

15 month infants
Familiarisation trials where person put a watermelon in the green box, then reached to box repeatedly
When actor had ‘false belief’ about where the watermelon was and correctly picked it up, looking time sig. increased
Implies that infants have rudimentary ToM far before able to verbalise - we need to adjust for their needs, rather than assume it’s not there as methods wouldn’t work with them

Question 13

Eye tracking

Answer 13

Can use infrared light reflections to see where infant looks
- non-invasive
More precise than looking time and gives us richer info of which parts of stimuli grabs most attention/time/patterns of looking

Question 14

Cannon & Woodward - predictions about human behaviour

Answer 14

Familiarise hand or claw moving towards a red or green ball
Then swap position of the balls, and place hand or claw in front of both
Wherever the infants eyes go to tells us where they expect it to go - whether they follow paths or goals and make predictions
With the hand, they predict it will go towards the ball it has been grasping, but no distinct pattern for the claw
– some understanding of humans having goals/desires that objects don’t

Question 15

Limitations of working with infant visual system

Answer 15

Infant visual acuity is quite poor, especially newborns - very young infants need very bright and high contrast stimuli and close presentation
Might have to develop the infant expectation, other times they will have enough experience to have their own already
Individual differences between eyes - eyes too close together, e.g. infant monkeys unable - somewhat harder with very light eyes