Publication Type: Individual Poster
Abstract: Background and Aims: Johnson’s (1990; 1998) hierarchical model of visual attention suggests that infants should be able to suppress exogenously elicited saccades as early as 3.5 months, but no data suggest this is true. We attempted to condition young infants to maintain fixation to a somewhat unattractive stimulus, which required suppressing saccades to a more attractive stimulus.
Methods: Sixty 2-, 3-, and 4-month-olds were individually placed in front of two computer monitors. Infants in the experimental condition were presented with a moderately unattractive stimulus (a red ball) on one screen. After the infant fixated this stimulus for 1s, a more attractive stimulus (a spinning, bouncing, flashing gear) was shown on the other screen. Both stimuli remained present for an additional 10 s. These infants were reinforced for looking at the less attractive stimulus by being presented with a 10 s cartoon clip after trials in which they fixated the less attractive stimulus for at least 5 s (cumulatively). Infants in the control condition saw the more attractive stimulus presented first, and they were reinforced for looking at the more attractive stimulus; otherwise, experimental and control conditions were identical. The amount of time spent looking at the less attractive stimulus was measured in both conditions.
Key Results: An ANOVA yielded a significant age X condition interaction (p<.05). A priori focused contrasts revealed that 3- and 4-month-olds in the experimental condition spent more time looking at the less attractive stimulus (3-month-olds M = 4.4, 4-month-olds M = 5.9) than did the 3- and 4-month-olds in the control condition (3-month-olds M = 3.8, 4-month-olds M = 2.5); this difference was not evident for 2-month-olds (experimental M = 5.4, control M = 5.9).
Conclusions: Two-month-olds spent little time looking at the less attractive stimulus regardless of whether they were reinforced for doing so. However, 3- and 4-month-old infants spent more time looking at the less attractive stimulus when they were rewarded for doing so than when they were not. It appears that these older infants were successfully conditioned to inhibit overt visual attention to competing stimuli (i.e., the more attractive stimulus). This existence of endogenous inhibitory control of visual attention in 3- and 4-month-olds is consistent with research demonstrating endogenous saccades as early as 2 months (i.e. Wentworth & Haith, 1998) and antisaccades as early as 4 months (Johnson, 1995). These results support Johnson’s (1990; 1998) hierarchical model of visual attention development.

Publication Type: Extended Abstract
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This experimental study examines two species of theories explaining banner animation effects: "automatic attention capture" vs. "contingency capture." Research based on the automatic attention capture theory suggests that motion detection is fundamentally natural and conducted involuntarily during the early stages of visual information processing (e.g., Lang, Borse, Wise, & David, 2002; Reeves & Nass, 1996). The contingency theory, on the other hand, explains that although motion detection may be automatic and involuntary, attention capture is contingent on attentional control settings, such as motivation and task demands (Folk, Remington, & Johnston, 1992). Researchers employing these theories have been able to produce data patterns consistent with predicted hypotheses, yet little attempts have been made to test the competing theories within the same experimental design. Furthermore, the stimuli used in these studies have widely been different from one another, making it difficult to compare the data for the purpose of theory testing. The present investigation attempts to provide a methodological ground to testing these two competing theories related to animation effects by employing a visual search paradigm. A total of 48 participants will be performing a visual search task in one of the two independent 2 (Target Banner Type) x 4 (Distractor Number) within-subject designs. Search task performance will be measured in reaction time to provide not only a solid, data-driven testing of the theories but also an important implication concerning the finding that attention capture is not always involuntary but contingent on attention control settings induced by task demands.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Over the past decade, political
scientists have made great strides in explaining the influences upon
the US Supreme Court's agenda. Our success in explaining cert. voting,
however, has overshadowed our relative lack of systematic explanation
of changes in the Court's attention to issues over time. The
attitudinal model championed by Segal and Spaeth argues that the
Court's attention to issues is primarily determined by the policy
preferences of the justices. Charles Epp has argued that the justices'
policy preferences are seriously constrained by the support structure
for legal mobilization in the public. Roy Flemming, B. Dan Wood and
John Bohte, have found that the Court's attention to issues is
influenced by both the broader public agenda and by the other branches
of government. My own dissertation research demonstrated that litigants
and potential litigants can attract the Supreme Court's attention by
their behavior in lower courts. This paper will build an integrated
model that tests these competing theories across multiple issue areas,
including racial discrimination, abortion, and antitrust.

Publication Type: Individual Poster
Abstract: When acting intentionally people typically attend to and monitor their action. Thus, from an observer’s perspective, an actor’s focus of attention or perceptual access is an excellent source of information regarding the actor’s intention-in-action. Previous research, using verbal measures, showed that 3-year-olds can use others’ line of regard for action interpretation (Joseph & Tager-Flusberg 1999). With respect to younger children, infants’ sensitivity to others’ line of regard (e.g. Baldwin 1993, Moses et al. 2001, Phillips et al. 2002) and their understanding of others’ intentional action (Meltzoff 1995, Carpenter et al. 1998) are well documented. However, it is an open question whether infants already understand something about the relation between others’ focus of attention and their intentional actions.

Thus, 18-month-olds (n=24) were shown an adult illuminating a light box using unusual actions (e.g., pressing down on it with a toy, or with her foot), in one of two conditions. In the attending condition, the adult performed the action while monitoring her behavior; in the distracted condition, she illuminated the light in exactly the same way, but while she was looking away. Each infant participated in four tasks, two in each condition (counterbalanced across subjects). (The duration of each demonstration was adjusted to infants’ looking behavior, as monitored ‘online’ by an assistant, and later manipulation checks confirmed that the amount of time infants watched the modeled action did not differ across conditions). Infants’ responses were coded from videotape, blind to condition. We predicted that infants would preferentially imitate the modeled action when the adult had attended to her actions (i.e., when acting intentionally).

An ANOVA on infants’ imitation scores yielded a significant effect of condition (attending vs. distracted, F(1, 22) = 18.02, p < .001) and no effect of gender, nor an interaction. Specifically, infants imitated the unusual action significantly more in the attending condition (in 71% of trials) than in the non-attending condition (in 29% of trials). The same pattern of results was found when focussing on infants’ first action responses (main effect of condition, F(1, 22) = 6.41, p = .019).

These results suggest that infants were able to use another person’s line of regard to distinguish intentional actions from incidental behaviour, and they adjusted their imitative response accordingly. Thus, infants are able to use attentional information for action understanding, to help determine the goal another person is pursuing. (Work on their use of emotion information is in progress.)

Publication Type: Individual Poster
Abstract: Background and Aims: It has been widely accepted that Joint Attention is not simply a systemic pattern of behavior, but an insight to another’s mind. Understanding relation between a person and the object of his/her attention has been suggested as one of the critical components of social knowledge that may contribute to the development of joint attention. The present study directly investigated whether infants' an understanding of other person’s “looking at” an object is related to the amount of time they are engaged in the coordinated joint attention at 18moths of age.
Methods: Fifty one 18-month-old infants and their mothers participated. To measure the amount of coordinated joint attention between infants and mother, the parent was asked to play with her infant in our observation room as if they were playing at home for 10 minutes. They were provided with a basket of toys which were chosen to encourage their interaction. A trained observer coded each session using the coding scheme from Bakeman and Adamson (Adamson, Bakeman, Russel, & Deckner, 1998). Infants’ comprehension of other's attentional relation was measured using a procedure that was adjusted from Brooks and Meltzoff’s(2002). The experimenter turned their heads toward an object with open (4 times) and closed eyes (4 times) and observed whether the infant turned his/her head to follow the experimenter’s gaze. Infants’ understanding of other person’s attention was measured by comparing frequencies of gaze following in each condition.
Key Results: The results showed that infants’ attentional understanding is significantly related to the amount of their coordinated joint attention during the free play situation. In addition, the results showed that infants' understanding of other person's attentional relation is significantly related to the successful shift from the supported joint attention to the coordinated joint attentional states. That is, when the mother was looking at what is attended to by her infant, it is more likely for infants with better understanding of other person’s attention to be engaged in the coordinated joint attention.
Conclusions: These results indeed suggest that one of the important individual characteristics of infants that may mediate the development of coordinated joint attention is their ability to understanding of other person’s, even though the causal direction between these two is uncertain.