Examining infants visual paired comparison performance in the US and rural Malawi.

Measures of attention and memory were evaluated in 6- to 9-month-old infants from two diverse contexts. One sample consisted of African infants residing in rural Malawi (N = 228, 118 girls, 110 boys). The other sample consisted of racially diverse infants residing in suburban California (N = 48, 24 girls, 24 boys). Infants were tested in an eye-tracking version of the visual paired comparison procedure and were shown racially familiar faces. The eye tracking data were parsed into individual looks, revealing that both groups of infants showed significant memory performance. However, how a look was operationally defined impacted some-but not other-measures of infant VPC performance. RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS: In both the US and Malawi, 6- to 9-month-old infants showed evidence of memory for faces they had previously viewed during a familiarization period. Infant age was associated with peak look duration and memory performance in both contexts. Different operational definitions of a look yielded consistent findings for peak look duration and novelty preference scores-but not shift rate. Operationalization of look-defined measures is an important consideration for studies of infants in different cultural contexts

The Role of Experience in Shaping Infants’ Visual Attention and Learning

This dissertation presents three studies exploring the important role of experience in shaping infants’ visual attention and learning in infancy. In the first chapter, I provide a general overview of each chapter. In Chapter 2, I examine similarities and differences in the eye movements of 6- to 9-month-old infants from the Sacramento Valley in the US and from rural Malawi in an adaptation of the Infant Orienting With Attention (IOWA) paradigm (Ross-Sheehy et al., 2015). This work adds to a growing literature focused on including more diverse samples of infants in research (Visser et al., 2022; Zaadnoordijk et al., 2021). Extending the findings from Chapter 2, in Chapter 3, I examine the Malawian infants’ visual attention longitudinally over a 6-month period, shedding light on developmental change and stability over time. Together, Chapters 2 and 3 discuss the shared and distinct developmental trajectories within varying cultural and environmental contexts. In Chapter 4, I examine the influence of the COVID-19 pandemic, specifically the use of face masks, on a sample of Sacramento Valley infants’ face processing and learning. Finally, Chapter 5 presents a broad overview of the main findings from each study, underscoring the interplay between culture, context, and input and how infants’ developing cognitive processes adapt to diverse experiences