The Infant Orienting With Attention Task: Assessing the Neural Basis of Spatial Attention in Infancy

Shannon Ross-Sheehy, Sebastian Schneegans, John P. Spencer
2015 Infancy  
Infant visual attention develops rapidly over the first year of life, significantly altering the way infants respond to peripheral visual events. Here we present data from 5-, 7-and 10-month-old infants using the Infant Orienting With Attention (IOWA) task, designed to capture developmental changes in visual spatial attention and saccade planning. Results indicate rapid development of spatial attention and visual response competition between 5 and 10 months. We use a dynamic neural field (DNF)
more » ... odel to link behavioral findings to neural population activity, providing a possible mechanistic explanation for observed developmental changes. Together, the behavioral and model simulation results provide new insights into the specific mechanisms that underlie spatial cueing effects, visual competition, and visual interference in infancy. Keywords infant development; visual orienting; visual attention; dynamic field model; spatial cueing; attentional development; exogenous attention; infant attention; saccades; visual perception; executive function; neurocomputational models From the first moments of life, infants undergo profound visual development. After only a few hours of visual experience, neonates demonstrate visual preferences for simple highcontrast objects and shapes (Johnson, 1992) and begin to recognize their mother's face (Bushnell, 2001) . These early visual behaviors are mediated by neural development, and change rapidly over the first several months of postnatal life. This close coupling of eye movements and underlying neural circuitry make orienting tasks an ideal means of assessing functional neural development. For example, young infants will reliably orient toward abruptly appearing visual events. These eye movements are likely automatic or reflexive, and are largely mediated by the superior colliculus and frontal eye fields (see for example: Atkinson, 1984; Johnson, 1990) . Thus, infants who fail to demonstrate this basic orienting response may lack sufficient cortical and/or subcortical development in these areas.
doi:10.1111/infa.12087 pmid:26273232 pmcid:PMC4530987 fatcat:jdmhbtsh7vhvzgwnkpx3oyqfay