Empty-headed dynamical model of infant visual foraging

• Published in: Developmental psychobiology Vol. 56; no. 5; pp. 1129 - 1133
• Main Author: Robertson, Steven S.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Blackwell Publishing Ltd 01.07.2014
• Subjects: Attention - physiology; dynamical; Female; Humans; hysteresis; Infant; looking; Male; Models, Psychological; Pattern Recognition, Visual - physiology; stochastic; visual foraging; Visual Perception - physiology; visual foraging; dynamical; stochastic; looking; model; infant; hysteresis
• ISSN: 0012-1630; 1098-2302
• DOI: 10.1002/dev.21165

Visual foraging is one important way that very young infants explore and learn about their environment. We recently showed that a simple stochastic dynamical model acts quantitatively like free‐looking 1‐month‐old infants, even though it does not include any components that directly represent the perceptual‐cognitive processes that operate on the input from visual foraging. This suggested that early in development, generic low‐level processes like noise and hysteresis in the mechanisms controlling gaze may drive visual foraging behavior and therefore regulate the input to higher‐level perceptual‐cognitive processes that later come to have more influence on free looking. Here we evaluate the model's ability to behave like 3‐month‐olds studied under the same experimental conditions as 1‐month‐olds. The results show that the empty‐headed model can also behave like 3‐month‐old infants, although not as well as 1‐month‐olds. Its partial success at 3 months suggests that generic low‐level processes controlling gaze remain important in visual foraging. Its pattern of failure suggests that by 3 months time‐dependent processes like attention have become especially important. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Dev Psychobiol 56: 1129–1133, 2014.