Attentional Blink Phenomenon in Infants

Article: Infants recognize rapid images, just like adults
Source: Hokkaido University (Japan)
Published: May 22, 2021

Infants could identify two faces when the temporal interval was 800 ms,
but they could identify only the first target (overlooking the second)
when the separation was 200 ms.

Spatial and temporal attention are primary cognitive processes that enable higher order thinking. Spatial attention is an aspect of visual working memory that develops dramatically during the first year of life and has been previously demonstrated to be similar between infants and adults. Researchers were curious to know whether the temporal element of visual working memory was also similar between adults and preverbal infants. They explored this question through testing the attentional blink effect, a temporal limitation in processing visual information when perception of images occurs less than half a second apart. In other words, if two images occur less than 500 ms apart, visual working memory would "blink" and not register the perception of one of the images. The sample comprised of forty 7- to 8-month-old infants, who were presented with rapid serial visual streams of two female faces as targets at a rate of 100 ms per image and temporally separated by either 200 ms or 800 ms. The scientists took advantage of infants' preferential looking at novelty to identify whether the infants could perceive an image. They found that the babies could identify targets at 800 ms, but not identify targets at 200 ms. They could consolidate items into visual working memory at the longer lag, within a second, but not at the shorter lag of less than half a second. In other words, for targets that were temporally separated by less than half a second, the infants demonstrated attentional blink. Like the similarities between adult and infant spatial visual attention, this study points to similar patterns in temporal visual attention, and the same temporal limitations, between adults and infants that take place as early as within the first year of life. The researchers argue that in addition to being the first study to demonstrate attentional blink in preverbal infants, study of this phenomenon is also relevant as it relates to consciousness.

My rating of this study: ⭐⭐

Tsurumiab S, Kanazawac S, Yamaguchi MK, et al. "Attentional blink in preverbal infants." Cognition.  214:104749. September 2021. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2021.104749