Habituation of the visual orienting response in young children1, 2

The eye tracks of 29 children (aged 2-7 years) were recorded by a reflection eye camera while they were looking ata4by 4 matrix of 16 white geometric shapes. When a circle suddenly changed to red, the children immediately looked at it for two-thirds of the presentation time, a reading which was 16 times the initial level before this novel color was introduced. With repeated presentations of the novel red circle display, progressively fewer fixations fell on the red circle. After 20 trials, this habituation was incomplete, and the red circle was still drawing six times the initial amount of looking found on the original white circle. Ss were apparently relatively slow to form a neural representation of the visual environment due to the wide range of choices in the original display. The age of the children had no monotonic effect on the high, and virtually equal, initial visual concentration, nor on the rate at which habituation occurred. An interesting contrast, therefore, appeared between these data and the marked age effects noted by others in the recognition of letter-like shapes. Unlike recognition tasks, orienting and habituation need a minimum of stimulus interpretation. Children, even as young as 2 years, have demonstrated a remarkable efficiency in these processes of orienting and habituation to novelty.