Attentional capture by onsets and offsets

Three experiments were conducted to examine whether human infants would form a categorical representation for the spatial relation between. Experiment 1 showed that 6- and 7-month-olds familiarized with stimuli depicting a diamond in different locations between two reference bars subsequently preferred a stimulus displaying the diamond located outside the bars over a stimulus displaying the diamond located in a novel position between the bars. Experiments 2 and 3 revealed that this preference could not be attributed to a failure to discriminate the location changes of the diamond between the bars or an a priori preference. The overall pattern of results indicates that 6- and 7-month-olds had formed a categorical representation for between. The findings are discussed in terms of factors affecting development of categorical representations for spatial relation information.