Covert orienting of attention in 3-month-old infants: The case of biological motion

We examined infants’ target-locked P1 component and the saccade latencies toward the peripheral target. Results showed that the P1 component was larger in response to congruent than to incongruent targets and saccade latencies were faster for congruent rather than incongruent trials. Moreover, the facilitation in processing sensory information (priming effects) presented at the cued spatial location occurs even before the onset of the oculomotor response, suggesting that covert attention is present before 4 months of age. Overall, this study highlights how ERPs method could help researchers at investigating the neural basis of attentional mechanisms in infants.
Source: Infant Behavior and Development - Category: Child Development Source Type: research