Aslin, R. N. and Johnson, S. P. (1996) Suppression of the optokinetic reflex in human infants: implications for stable fixation and shifts of attention. Infant Behavior and Development, 19 (2). pp. 233-240. ISSN 1934-8800
Full text not available from this repository.Abstract
The ability of 1-, 2-, and 4-month-old infants to attend to a small, stationary visual target while a large background texture moved horizontally was assessed using electrooculography. The background texture, consisting of a randomly arranged field of dots or a set of vertically oriented stripes, was effective at all ages in eliciting the optokinetic reflex (OKR), which stabilizes gaze on a moving display. When the target, consisting of a red bar, was added to the center of the moving background display, it was effective in suppressing the OKR, except in 1-month-olds. Under monocular viewing conditions, background motion in the nasal-temporal direction was ineffective in eliciting robust OKR in 1- and 2-month-olds. These same infants presented with temporal-nasal background motion showed robust OKR equal to their OKR under binocular viewing conditions. However, the 2-month-olds showed OKR suppression only half as often as they did under binocular viewing conditions, and the 1-month-olds did not show OKR suppression. The 4-month-olds showed no nasal-temporal OKR asymmetry under monocular viewing conditions, and, like the 2-month-olds, OKR suppression was present about half as often as under binocular viewing conditions.