VISUAL ANTICIPATION AND EXPECTATION IN EARLY INFANCY

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This application explores the development of anticipation and expectation for visual events in early infancy. Visual fixations are recorded to index the presence of anticipation and expectation. Nine experiments are proposed with human infants who range from two to four months of age. These experiments are organized under three major rubrics with three experiments in each category. First, developmental questions are asked: At what age are babies capable of developing anticipations and/or expectations for visual events, and is there month-to-month stability in this capability? Next, we ask what features babies are mapping of the basic visual sequence we use (e.g., spatial or temporal) and how these features are represented. Finally, we propose to study three ways of complicating visual sequences to lay a base for asking when babies are capable of mastering various levels of rules that govern the unfolding of events. Our method employs infrared corneal- and retinal-reflection video recording of visual fixation sequences. Through analysis of the infant's visual scanning records and derived eye-movement parameters, we draw inferences about whether a baby can anticipate the occurrence of an event before it occurs. Alternatively, by examining the baby's latency to respond to predictable but nonanticipated events (in comparison to control conditions), we can determine whether the baby has developed an expectation for those events.