Abstract
Previous studies mentioned that infants would detect the face presented for short duration; 5- and 10-month-olds perceive the face presented for 150 ms followed by mask (Gelskov and Kouider, 2010), and 5-month-olds learned the face presented for 100 ms without mask (Lasky and Spiro, 1980). However, these studies have not elucidated infants' ability to detect the face in rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) sequence, which pictures mask each other. In this study, we investigated the infants' ability to perceive and learn a face in an RSVP sequence. The purpose of Experiment 1 was to examine whether 5- to 8- month-olds perceive various pictures presented for 100 ms, adults could perceive. Infants were presented with two RSVP sequences of a series of 15 pictures presented for 11 or 100 ms per picture with no interstimulus interval side by side. We hypothesized that if infants perceive each picture presented for 100 ms, they would prefer 100-ms sequences. We tested this by comparing the looking time to each sequence. Results showed that only 7- and 8- month-olds preferred the 100-ms sequence. In Experiment 2, to examine whether 5- to 8- month-olds detect the face presented for 100 ms, two RSVP sequences in each which contained an upright (or inverted) face were presented side by side, and infants' preference to upright face was measured. In this experiment, 7- and 8- month-olds preferred the RSVP sequence containing upright faces, suggesting that these infants detect the faces. In Experiment 3, to further clarify the face processing in infants, we tested whether infants could learn faces in RSVP sequences. The results indicated that 7- and 8- month-olds learned the faces during the RSVP. In sum, our results indicate that 7- and 8- month-olds perceive and learn the face in RSVP sequences.
Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2018