Objects in the Center: How the Infant's Body Constrains Infant Scenes

Abstract: During early visual development, the infant's body and actions both create and constrain the experiences on which the visual system grows. Evidence on early motor development suggests a bias for acting on objects with the eyes, head, trunk, hands, and object aligned at midline. Because these sensory- motor bodies structure visual input, they may also play a role in the development of visual attention: attended objects are at the center of a head- and body-centered scene. In this study, we designed a table-top object exploration task, in which infants and parents were presented with novel objects for joint play and examination. Using a head-mounted eye-tracking system, we measured each infant's point of gaze relative to the head when attending objects. With an additional overhead camera, we recorded the position of each object relative to the infant's body. We show that even during free toy play, infants tend to bring attended objects towards their body's midline and attend objects with head and eyes aligned, systematically creating images with the attended object at center.