| Abstract: | Twenty-four infants were tested at 8 and 12 weeks of age—12 at each age—to determine fixation times to three checkerboard patterns of equal area, a 2 × 2, 8 × 8, and 24 × 24. Each infant was tested twice, once with a single stimulus method of presentation and once with a paired-comparisons. Both methods were similar in depicting age and sex differences. The older infants looked longer at the more complex patterns while the female infants fixated complex patterns longer, relative to simpler patterns, than than did the males. However, the paired-comparisons method was superior in distinguishing between what McCall (1970) has called “blank looking” from meaningful perceptual-cognitive interaction with a stimulus. The data were interpreted as showing that because females are more able to process information from static stimuli, as suggested by McCall, they are ahead of their male age peers in their perceptual-cognitive development within this age range. |
