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Volume 7 Supplement 1

International Society on Brain and Behaviour: 3rd International Congress on Brain and Behaviour

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Faces attract infants' attention in complex displays

Annals of General Psychiatry volume 7, Article number: S276 (2008) Cite this article

Background

Hersler and Hochstein [1] found in adult experiments that face “pop-out”, that is they are looked at earlier and for longer, when presented together with a variety of different objects.

Materials and methods

In contrast to “classical” “pop out” studies we don't vary the number of distractors. We explored this effect in 6-month old infants. Twelve slides were presented to infants, each one including one human face and five different object distractors. The objects are similar to faces regarding their shape, colour, luminance and familiarity. Also, half of the faces have direct gaze, the other averted.

Results

Results indicate that faces “pop out” among distractors. Direct and averted gaze do not differ from each other regarding pop-out effects.

Conclusions

The implications of these results are discussed.

References

  1. Hershler O, Hochstein S: At first sight: A high-level pop out effect for faces. Vision Research. 2005, 45: 1707-1724. 10.1016/j.visres.2004.12.021.

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  2. Farroni T, Csibra G, Simion F, Johnson MH: Eye contact detection in humans from birth. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA. 2002, 99: 9602-9605. 10.1073/pnas.152159999.

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  3. Johnson M, Dziurawiec S, Ellis H, Morton J: Newborns preferential tracking of face-like stimuli and its' subsequent decline. Cognition. 1991, 40: 1-19. 10.1016/0010-0277(91)90045-6.

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Acknowledgements

I wish to thank Prof Mark Johnson, Dr Teodora Gliga, Dr Mayada Elsabbach all of whom helped me in the experiment, and Dr Kyrana Tsapkini, who although far away, has been very supportive to me during this year.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, University College London-Birkbeck College, London, UK

    Athina Andravizou

  2. Department of Psychology, Centre for Brain and Cognitive Development, Birkbeck College, London, UK

    Teodora Gliga, Mayada Elsabbagh & Mark Johnson

Authors
  1. Athina Andravizou
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  2. Teodora Gliga
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  3. Mayada Elsabbagh
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  4. Mark Johnson
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Open Access This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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Andravizou, A., Gliga, T., Elsabbagh, M. et al. Faces attract infants' attention in complex displays. Ann Gen Psychiatry 7 (Suppl 1), S276 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1186/1744-859X-7-S1-S276

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/1744-859X-7-S1-S276

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Annals of General Psychiatry

ISSN: 1744-859X