Department of Psychiatry

Developmental Research

Infant Eye Tracking

This research focuses on perceptual and cognitive development in infants. We are particularly interested in how infants begin to understand the future – that is, to organize their behavior around events that have not yet happened.

Can infants form time expectations (when something will happen)?
What are the limits on their ability to form spatial expectations (where something will happen)?
Do they form expectations for particular events (what will happen)?
Can infants remember expectations they formed later, so that they benefit from their experience?
Do limitations in the capacity of their memory affect the expectations they can form, and how do they overcome these limitations as they grow?

Since coordination is not well developed in many of the younger infants we study, we concentrate on their eye movements. Eye movements are well developed within the first couple of months after an infant is born and their eye movements tell us what the brain is doing. For example, in our work on visual expectations, we find that infants move their eyes to a location where something is going to happen before it actually occurs.

Infant eye tracking begins around 13-weeks of age and we place your infant on a research assistant’s lap so that his/her head and body is completely supported or place him/her in an infant carseat. Computer-generated pictures are displayed on a video monitor in front of your child. Each child will watch a 71-picture sequence that will last approximately 2 ½ minutes. All of these pictures are in color and appear on the screen for a little less than a second, with a brief one second pause between pictures. An infrared (invisible red) light source illuminates your child’s eye so that we can videotape your child’s eye movements. We review the videotape at a later time to score where your child was looking.

At around 26-weeks (6 months) of age we complete another eye tracking recording. Each child will watch a 71-picture sequence, lasting approximately 1 ½ minutes. All of the pictures are in color and are on the screen for a little less than a second, with a brief one second pause between pictures. Each picture is accompanied by sound. An infrared (invisible) light source is used to illuminate your child’s eye. Your child’s eye will be videotaped during the session to allow later coding of eye movements.