So grateful to have collaborated with @briannakhunter.bsky.social, @johnkiat.bsky.social, Christian Nelson, Steve Luck, and @lisaoakes.bsky.social on this one.

More to come on how infants learn to navigate the complexity of the visual world!

#infantcognition #development #visualperception

3) Importantly, the influence of orientation was modulated by visual clutter—it had stronger predictive power in less cluttered scenes.

These findings suggest that while infants’ attention is still influenced by low-level salience, not all features are equal—and their use evolves with development.

1) Infants’ fixations were strongly predicted by orientation, and this effect grew with age.

2) Color and intensity did not reliably predict gaze overall, though color was slightly predicting the fixation locations of the youngest infants.

We examined how 4-12-month-olds allocate attention while viewing scenes, using the Graph-Based Visual Salience (GBVS) model to break salience into its component features: orientation, color, and intensity. Across two experiments with over 160 infants, we found that:

NEW PAPER
doi.org/10.1080/1350...

Q: What low-level visual features guide infants’ attention in naturalistic scenes? Intensity? Color? Orientation?

A: Orientation!

What a great conference filled with great speakers and presenters!

Erim and I were so happy to share our work examining the efficacy of multiple choice quizzes that allow for multiple attempts on student final course grades.

Grateful to have our paper spotlighted by the ICIS Communication Committee @infantstudies.bsky.social 🪩🎉👶📝

[email protected], @shannonmklotz.bsky.social et al. (2024) tested relative influence of local meaning on 4-12mos infants' eye gaze: 1) infants looked more at semantic regions of real-world scenes, like adults; 2) effect of meaning on infant attn ⬆️ w/ age #infancypapers doi.org/10.1111/infa...

"A photographer took pictures of people before and after she called them b̵e̵a̵u̵t̵i̵f̵u̵l̵ a Master of Arts"

I've got an exciting #Visionscience and #STEMed announcement: My textbook "Practical Vision: Learning through Experimentation" is now in production at Routledge Books! The book focuses on hands-on, analog exercises to identify and discuss key mechanisms of human vision. Coming October 2024!

📣 I'm hiring a lab coordinator! This position is ideal for someone looking for research experience before applying to graduate school.

Deadline is April 1st—flexible summer start date. Details and instructions below! employment.ucsd.edu/laboratory-c...

It's official! Maritza Miramontes has been elected as a CDS Student Board Member!

I highly recommend meeting her (she's one of my favorite people in the world!) and checking out her poster today (P3-89)
#CDS2024

Yuko Munakata’s plenary talk at #CDS2024 was **chef’s kiss**

She highlighted the role of social contexts (norms, cultural habits, systems, etc.) can play in how kids engage in executive function.

So exciting to have our work featured by the National Eye Institute (NEI)!

Read the paper 📝 here: doi.org/10.1111/infa...

I just saw this, I guess need to turn my Bluesky notifications on! 😅 Thank you so much for having me. It was great to share my work with you all and get your insight! Absolutely wonderful to meet you all and these are such kind words!

Our next workshop is coming up soon!

Power Analysis
March 12, 2024 | 14:00-15:30 UTC (3-4:30pm CET) on Zoom
Presented by: @chrismmcox.bsky.social, Aarhus University

Learn more and register now!
manybabies.org/events/

#psychsky #devpsych #manybabies #academicsky

Special thanks to @lisaoakes.bsky.social, Taylor Hayes, Katie Pomaranski, and John Henderson for making this work possible!

doi.org/10.1111/infa...

Older infants looked more at meaningful regions, aligning with prior research predicting a shift from relying on stimulus-driven factors to higher-level cognitive processes. This transition contributes to a more adult-like gaze behavior over the first year of life.

We found that infants preferentially fixated regions high in local meaning, physical salience, and closer the the center of the screen. 

Interestingly, meaning had a greater impact on infants' fixations than saliency, similar to findings in adults during natural scene viewing.

We wanted to know whether infants look to regions high in meaning but, just as importantly, whether they avoid regions with low meaning. To investigate, we compared infants' fixated locations to simulated non-fixated locations in terms of meaning, saliency, and center proximity.

We examined the influence of local meaning on the gaze patterns of infants aged 4-12 months towards naturalistic scenes, using meaning maps developed by John Henderson and Taylor Hayes. Our analysis controlled for physical salience and center bias.

NEW PAPER:
doi.org/10.1111/infa...

Q: Adults attend to locally meaningful regions in naturalistic scenes. Do infants? 

A: Yes! 🧵