Summary
The study investigated attentional behaviour during operant acquisition of a manipulative response in six- and nin-month-old infants. Visual fixation to response-contingent and to response-non-contingent stimulation was examined under conditions where a cue spatially located the discontiguous feedback source, and where no cue was available. In general, infants spent more time fixating the feedback source when the cue was available. However, interaction effects revealed that this effect interacted with both contingency scheduling and age across phases.
For six-month-old infants non-contingent stimulation elicited reliably more visual fixation of the feedback source than did contingent feedback, but only with the cue in situ. In the absence of the cue this reliably differentiated pattern of visual behaviour was not observed. For nine-month-old infants, despite a high level of visual fixation of the feedback source, a similar pattern of visual behaviour did not emerge. The findings are discussed in relation to operant acquisition and highlight the importance of coupling visual attentional and operant data in the study of infant learning processes.
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The conduct of this study was supported by a grant from the United Kingdom Social Science Research Council to H. R. Schaffer. The author is grateful to H. R. Schaffer and W. M. Cheyne for advice, and to Margaret Hunter who assisted with the data collection.
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Millar, W.S. Visual attention to contingent and non-contingent stimulation in six- and nine-month-old infants. Psychol. Res 37, 309–319 (1975). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00309725
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00309725