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Effects of attentional behaviours on infant visual preferences and object choice

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Abstract

Many developmental studies have examined the effects of joint attention. However, it has been difficult to compare effects of initiating joint attention and responding to joint attention in infants. Here, we compared the effects of initiating joint attention and responding joint attention on object information processing, object preference, and facial preferences in infants. Thirty-seven infants (10 to 12 months of age) were shown stimuli in which a female gazed towards or away from an object. Participants were assigned to initiating joint attention condition or responding joint attention condition. Results suggest that initiating joint attention promoted object information processing, whereas responding joint attention did not. Both joint attention conditions affected the facial preference for the person who engaged joint attention. In addition, after initiating joint attention, infants chose objects gazed by other person more often than after responding joint attention. It appears that attentional behaviours that precede the perception of certain stimuli affect infants’ cognitive responses to those stimuli.

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Acknowledgements

We appreciate the cooperation of all families that agreed to participate in this study. We would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers and colleagues who have given us useful feedback.

Funding

Young Fellowship grants to M.I from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science and Grants to S.I from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (#25245067 and #16H06301) supported the research.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Graduate School of Letters, Kyoto University, Yoshida-Honmachi, Sakyo-ku, Kyoto, 606-8501, Japan

    Mitsuhiko Ishikawa & Shoji Itakura

  2. Hitachi High-Technologies Corporation, Tokyo, Japan

    Mina Yoshimura

  3. Department of Bioscience and Engineering, Shibaura Institute of Technology, Tokyo, Japan

    Hiroki Sato

Authors
  1. Mitsuhiko Ishikawa
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  2. Mina Yoshimura
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  3. Hiroki Sato
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  4. Shoji Itakura
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Contributions

M.I. developed the study concept and conducted experiments and data analysis. All authors approved the experiment design and discussed about the results. S.I. supervised this study.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Mitsuhiko Ishikawa.

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Conflict of interest

Authors have no conflicts of interest.

Ethical standard

Our experimental protocol was approved by the Research Ethics Review Board of the Department of Psychology, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan (protocol no. 28-P-12). The study was carried out in accordance with the provisions of the World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki.

Informed consent

All participants gave their written informed consent to participate. All stimuli were originally created for this study, and persons represented in the figure were given informed consent and permitted to publish the images in all formats.

Additional information

Handling editor: Katsumi Watanabe (Waseda University); Reviewers: Alicja Niedźwiecka (University of Warsaw), Ilaria Taglialatela Scafati (University of Edinburgh).

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Ishikawa, M., Yoshimura, M., Sato, H. et al. Effects of attentional behaviours on infant visual preferences and object choice. Cogn Process 20, 317–324 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10339-019-00918-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10339-019-00918-x

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