Read the full open-access paper here:
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Big thanks to my co-authors and the team of research assistants at the UC Davis Infant Cognition Lab ( @ucdavisicl.bsky.social ).

Feel free to reach out with any questions!

These finding support the conclusion that higher-order visual areas may play an increasing role in guiding visual attention across infancy, reflecting a developmental shift toward a more abstract representation of the environment

We found that younger infants' fixation patterns were significantly related to patterns of activation in low-level regions of adult visual cortex. Older infant's fixations were related to both low- and mid-level regions, similar to the pattern of results of a comparison group of adult subjects

We used representational similarity analysis to compare this adult fMRI data to younger (5-7 mo) and older (10-12 mo) infants' fixation patterns as they viewed a subset of the NSD scenes from the NSD in our lab

Testing this idea empirically has been challenging, given difficulties in measuring visual cortex in infancy. We therefore leveraged the Natural Scenes Dataset (naturalscenesdataset.org), which contains high quantity and high quality fMRI data from adults viewing thousands of scenes

Infants' attention is increasingly guided by higher-level stimulus features, suggesting that the gradual maturation of higher-level visual cortical areas may increasingly support gaze control

Writing this paper has reminded me how grateful I am to be part of the vibrant infant attention community 👶

Huge thanks to co-authors @shannonmklotz.bsky.social @juliemarkant.bsky.social @lisaoakes.bsky.social + Christian & Erim

We can’t wait to see what the next 25 years of research will reveal!

We hope that future research will increasingly incorporate 1) longitudinal and multisystem approaches that track infants’ attention over time in the context of other developing skills; 2) ecologically valid stimuli and measures; and 3) samples that reflect a broader range of diversity in experience.

We've also learned infant attention is context-dependent. Infants’ focus shifts based on the complexity of the environment and the social or emotional relevance of stimuli.

We now know that infant attention is a complex system. Attention reflects interactions among multiple dynamically changing processes such as memory, perception, and motor development.

For years, attention was described as a progression from bottom-up to top-down control. With use of modern tools, we've learned that attention development isn't quite so simple. A dichotomy between bottom-up vs top-down control cannot fully explain how infants attend.