What types of visual patterns attract a babys attention?
Families that visit the Discovery Center can use the toys in the Infant Area to find out what types of patterns attract their babies’ attention. Researchers showed newborns and older infants pictures of different patterns: a bullseye, a checkerboard, solid colors, and line drawings of faces. The researchers measured how long infants looked at each picture before they became bored and turned away. They also tried showing babies two different images at the same time, and recorded which image babies chose to look at. By trying many different combinations of images, they hoped to find out what kinds of patterns are most interesting to infants. The researchers found that babies looked at the images of faces much longer than any other kind of pattern. When infants were given a choice between a face and another pattern, they almost always chose to look at the face. Even infants just a few hours old showed this preference for faces, indicating that babies may be born with a natural preference
