Preferential looking is an experimental method in

developmental psychology Developmental psychology is the science, scientific study of how and why humans grow, change, and adapt across the course of their lives. Originally concerned with infants and children, the field has expanded to include adolescence, adult deve ...

used to gain insight into the young

mind The mind is the set of faculties responsible for all mental phenomena. Often the term is also identified with the phenomena themselves. These faculties include thought, imagination, memory, will, and sensation. They are responsible for various m ...

brain A brain is an organ that serves as the center of the nervous system in all vertebrate and most invertebrate animals. It is located in the head, usually close to the sensory organs for senses such as vision. It is the most complex organ in a v ...

. The method as used today was developed by the developmental psychologist

Robert L. Fantz Robert Lowell Fantz (1925–1981) was an American developmental psychologist who pioneered several studies into infant perception. In particular, the preferential looking paradigm introduced by Fantz in the 1961 is widely used in cognitive develo ...

in the 1960s.

The Preferential Looking Technique

According to the American Psychological Association, the preferential looking technique is "an experimental method for assessing the perceptual capabilities of nonverbal individuals (e.g., human infants, nonhuman animals)". If the average infant looks longer at the second stimulus, this suggests that the infant can discriminate between the stimuli. This method has been used extensively in cognitive science and

to assess the character of infant's perceptual systems, and, by extension, innate cognitive faculties. An investigator or examiner observes the infants behavior to determine which stimulus the infant fixates on.

Robert L. Fantz

Robert L. Fantz (1925-1981) was a developmental psychologist who launched several studies on infant perception including the preferential looking paradigm. Fantz introduced this paradigm in 1961 while working at the Case Western Reserve University. The preferential looking paradigm is used in studies of infants regarding cognitive development and categorization. Fantz's study showed that infants looked at patterned images longer than uniform images. He later built upon his study in 1964 to include habituation situations. These situations exhibited an infants preference for new or unusual stimuli.

Summary of Findings

Conclusions have been drawn from preferential looking experiments about the

knowledge Knowledge can be defined as awareness of facts or as practical skills, and may also refer to familiarity with objects or situations. Knowledge of facts, also called propositional knowledge, is often defined as true belief that is distinc ...

that infants possess. For example, if infants discriminate between rule-following and rule-violating stimuli—say, by looking longer, on average, at the latter than the former—then it has sometimes been concluded that infants ''know'' the rule. Here is an example: 100 infants are shown an object that appears to teleport, violating the rule that objects move in continuous paths. Another 100 similar infants are shown an object that behaves in a nearly identical manner to the object from group 1, except that this object does not teleport. If the former stimulus induces longer looking times than the latter, then, so the argument goes, infants expect that objects obey the continuity rule, and are surprised when they violate this rule. Findings from preferential looking experiments have suggested that humans innately possess sets of beliefs about how objects interact ("

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" or "folk mechanics") and about how animate beings interact ("

folk psychology In philosophy of mind and cognitive science, folk psychology, or commonsense psychology, is a human capacity to explain and predict the behavior and mental state of other people. Processes and items encountered in daily life such as pain, pleasure ...

").

The Preferential Looking Technique at Work

A 2018 study collected data using a preferential looking paradigm. The paradigm was analyzing looking behavior and pupil dilation to track children's recognition to different degrees of mismatching labels and objects in a picture. It was found evidence that there is a sensitivity to phonological mismatch among children. The study also provided support for the thesis that early comprehension and knowledge of root words are solid enough to convert subphonemic detail to what they are not familiar with. Preferential looking experiments have been cited in support of hypotheses regarding a wide range of inborn cognitive capacities, including: *

Depth perception Depth perception is the ability to perceive distance to objects in the world using the visual system and visual perception. It is a major factor in perceiving the world in three dimensions. Depth perception happens primarily due to stereopsis an ...

Face perception Facial perception is an individual's understanding and interpretation of the face. Here, perception implies the presence of consciousness and hence excludes automated facial recognition systems. Although facial recognition is found in other spec ...

* Basic arithmetic (

numeracy Numeracy is the ability to understand, reason with, and to apply simple numerical concepts. The charity National Numeracy states: "Numeracy means understanding how mathematics is used in the real world and being able to apply it to make the bes ...

)

Labs using preferential looking

* UIUC * CWRU (Fantz, later Fagan et al.)http://blog.case.edu/case-news/2009/08/05/josephfaganmensa

Studies employing preferential looking

References

* Sheehy, Noel; Chapman, Antony J.; Conroy, Wendy A. (2002).

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. Retrieved 2019-06-28. * Spelke, E.S. (1994). Initial knowledge: Six suggestions. ''

Cognition Cognition refers to "the mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses". It encompasses all aspects of intellectual functions and processes such as: perception, attention, thought, ...

'', 50, pp. 431–445. (Reprinted in J. Mehler and S. Franck (Eds.) ''Cognition on Cognition'', pp. 433–48.

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.) {{DEFAULTSORT:Preferential Looking Cognitive science Behavioral concepts Psychological methodology