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. 2009 Sep 10;14(5):550-562.
doi: 10.1080/15250000903144199. Epub 2009 Sep 1.

Faces Attract Infants' Attention in Complex Displays

Teodora Gliga  1 , Mayada Elsabbagh  1 , Athina Andravizou  1 , Mark Johnson  1
Affiliations

Faces Attract Infants' Attention in Complex Displays

Teodora Gliga et al. Infancy. .

Abstract

Infant's face preferences have previously been assessed in displays containing 1 or 2 faces. Here we present 6-month-old infants with a complex visual array containing faces among multiple visual objects. Despite the competing objects, infants direct their first saccade toward faces more frequently than expected by chance (Experiment 1). The attention-grabbing effect of faces is not selective to upright faces (Experiment 2) but does require the presence of internal facial elements, as faces whose interior has been phase-scrambled did not attract infants' attention (Experiment 3). On the contrary, when the number of fixations is considered, upright faces are scanned more extensively than both inverted and phase-scrambled faces. The difference in selectivity between the first look measure and the fixation count measure is discussed in light of a distinction between attention-grabbing and attention-holding mechanisms.

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