Visual attention and distractability in 3-to 5-month-old infants

Development Of sensitivity to distractors is explored in 3- to 5-month-old infants. A peripheral distractor was presented when infants sustained attention on a central stimulus for 4 seconds, and both targets remained present for 10 seconds. A session involved 5 trials, with the central stimulus changing from trial to trial, while the distractor remained the same. Moreover, infants were observed in an habituation situation. Two hypotheses were studied :first, as 3 months is a transition point concerning the development of the oculomotor system, important interindividual differences are expected. Second, such problems no longer occur in 5-month-old infants, thus no links between ages are expected, whereas habituation with trials should be observed. For 3-month-old infants, long latences were observed, which may correspond to difficulties in disengaging fixations. Two months later such long latencies were rare, and no individual stability was observed. Moreover habituation to the distractor appeared only in 5-month olds. Finally, correlations between, fixation durations in both situations, distractor and habituation, were significant in 3-month olds. Results are discussed in relation to Colombo's, Richards's and Ruff s data.