ASSESSING THE PRIMARY MOMENTS IN INFANT ENCODING OF COMPOUND VISUAL-STIMULI

In order to assess whether the chromatic and spatial components of vis ual stimuli are initially encoded in a compound way, a backward-maskin g procedure was used in a series of five experiments involving 60 infa nts (M age = 23 weeks, SD = 3.9). The duration of encoding intervals w as varied across the experiments, but in all cases, infants were famil iarized to a bicolored stimulus followed after each exposure by a mask ing stimulus. Encoding of the target stimulus was subsequently assesse d on tests pairing this stimulus either with its chromatic reversal or with an identical pattern in new colors. The pattern of test performa nce across the five experiments indicated that infants were able to en code the colors of the target stimulus in correct spatial locations bu t may not necessarily do so from the earliest phases of response.