par Bourgaux, Laura 
;Quek, Genevieve G.L.;De Heering, Adélaïde
Référence Budapest CEU Conference on Cognitive Development (BCCCD) (15-17/01/2026: Budapest, Hungary)
Publication Non publié, 2026-01-16
;Quek, Genevieve G.L.;De Heering, Adélaïde Référence Budapest CEU Conference on Cognitive Development (BCCCD) (15-17/01/2026: Budapest, Hungary)
Publication Non publié, 2026-01-16
Poster de conférence
| Résumé : | Faces hold a unique status in human perception, naturally capturing infants’ attention (Gliga et al., 2009; Reynolds & Roth, 2018). However, the role of attentional processes in shaping visual perception during early development remains unclear. Using a frequency-tagging approach combined with electroencephalography (Quek & de Heering, 2024), the present study investigates whether and how cross-modal cues dynamically modulate infants’ attention toward or away from distinct visual categories, including highly salient stimuli such as faces. To this end, 6- to 9-month-old infants viewed rapid streams of images presented at a rate of 6 Hz (6 images/second), with faces and birds interlaced at distinct periodic intervals within each 30-second trial: a bird every 5 images (i.e., 1.2 Hz); a face every 4 images (i.e., 1.5 Hz). Each trial also contained neutral sounds, human voices or bird vocalizations presented at non-periodic intervals. Of key interest was whether this auditory information would modulate the strength of the face- and bird- selective signals. Given that infants’ face categorization is less robust than in adults (de Heering & Rossion, 2015), we hypothesized that human vocalizations would drive infants’ attention towards the face stimuli, thus enhancing the face-selective response. We also expected the bird-selective response to be enhanced due to a general attentional engagement induced by human voices (Stavropoulos & Carver, 2016). In the bird vocalization trials, based on the adult study (Quek & de Heering, 2024), we expected to find attentional suppression for faces and attentional enhancement for birds, because the infants have to inhibit their natural attraction for the former in order to pay attention to the latter. Preliminary results suggest human vocalizations may have served to suppress both category-selective responses, while bird vocalizations suppressed the face-selective response while enhancing the bird-selective response, but more power is needed. Overall, this work will shed light on the plasticity of early attentional biases and explore whether and how infants disengage and redirect their attention from highly salient toward less salient visual categories. |
