Infant Timekeeping: Attention and Temporal Estimation in 4-Month-Olds

Four-month-old infants were exposed to sequences in which a 2-s light stimulus alternated with dark interstimulus periods whose length was manipulated to be 3 or 5 s. A predictable on-off pattern occurred for eight trials, but the light stimulus was omitted on the ninth trial. Infants showed heart rate responses on the omission trial that were closely synchronized with the expected recurrence of the stimulus. In addition, these heart rate patterns were observed predominantly in infants who had previously shown high levels of sustained attention in pretests with visual stimuli. These findings indicate remarkable precision in infants' estimation of time intervals, and suggest that the link between time estimation and attentional processes is present in early infancy.

[1]  T. L. Turco,et al.  Heart rate conditioning in young infants using a visual conditional stimulus. , 1980, Journal of experimental child psychology.

[2]  J. Richards.  The development of sustained visual attention in infants from 14 to 26 weeks of age. , 1985, Psychophysiology.

[3]  Infant heart-rate responses to temporally predictable and unpredictable events , 1991 .

[4]  R K Clifton,et al.  Heart rate conditioning in the newborn infant. , 1974, Journal of experimental child psychology.

[5]  S. W. Brown,et al.  Time perception and attention: The effects of prospective versus retrospective paradigms and task demands on perceived duration , 1985, Perception & psychophysics.

[6]  JORDAN GRAFMAN,et al.  Duration Processing after Frontal Lobe Lesions a , 1995, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences.

[7]  M Coltheart,et al.  Distraction and Time Estimation , 1968, The Quarterly journal of experimental psychology.

[8]  A Theory of Time-Perception , 1904 .

[9]  J. Colombo,et al.  Heart rate-defined phases of attention, look duration, and infant performance in the paired-comparison paradigm. , 2001, Child development.

[10]  J. Colombo.  The development of visual attention in infancy. , 2001, Annual review of psychology.

[11]  T. F. Sawyer.  Allocation of Attention and Practice in the Production of Time Intervals , 1999, Perceptual and motor skills.

[12]  W. Berg.  Cardiac orienting responses of 6- and 16-week-old infants. , 1974, Journal of experimental child psychology.

[13]  D. Gopher,et al.  Attention and performance XVII: Cognitive regulation of performance: Interaction of theory and application. , 1999 .

[14]  Françoise Macar,et al.  Multiple approaches to investigate the existence of an internal clock using attentional resources , 1999, Behavioural Processes.

[15]  M. Kinsbourne,et al.  Time estimation by patients with frontal lesions and by Korsakoff amnesics , 2000, Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society.

[16]  J Gibbon,et al.  Cerebellar dysfunctions of temporal processing in the seconds range in humans , 1998, Neuroreport.

[17]  D. Zakay.  The role of attention in children's time perception. , 1992, Journal of experimental child psychology.

[18]  R. Block,et al.  The role of attention in time estimation processes , 1996 .

[19]  R. Barkley,et al.  Sense of time in children with ADHD: Effects of duration, distraction, and stimulant medication , 1997, Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society.

[20]  K. Connolly,et al.  Discrimination by newborns of the intensity, frequency and temporal characteristics of auditory stimuli. , 1973, British journal of psychology.

[21]  T D Mckay.  Time Estimation: Effects of Attentional Focus and a Comparison of Interval Conditions , 1977, Perceptual and motor skills.

[22]  C. Adkinson,et al.  Cardiac deceleration in newborns: habituation, dishabituation, and offset responses. , 1976, Journal of experimental child psychology.

[23]  S. W. Brown,et al.  Multiple timing and the allocation of attention. , 1990, Acta psychologica.

[24]  Joseph D. Allen,et al.  The effects of total and subtotal prefrontal cortex lesions on the timing ability of the rat , 1997, Psychobiology.

[25]  C. Gallistel,et al.  Toward a neurobiology of temporal cognition: advances and challenges , 1997, Current Opinion in Neurobiology.

[26]  J. Duncan.  Attention, intelligence, and the frontal lobes. , 1995 .

[27]  Peter A. Hancock,et al.  Developmental Changes in Human Duration Judgments: A Meta-Analytic Review , 1999 .

[28]  G Underwood,et al.  Selectivity of Attention and the Perception of Duration , 1973, Perception.

[29]  S. Porges,et al.  Heart Rate Conditioning in Newborn Infants: Relationships Among Conditionability, Heart Rate Variability, and Sex. , 1975 .

[30]  M. Boltz.  Time estimation and attentional perspective , 1991, Perception & psychophysics.

[31]  J. Richards,et al.  Effects of attention on infants' preference for briefly exposed visual stimuli in the paired-comparison recognition-memory paradigm. , 1997, Developmental psychology.

[32]  Andrew Simmons,et al.  Prefrontal involvement in temporal bridging and timing movement , 1998, Neuropsychologia.

[33]  S. Grondin,et al.  From physical time to the first and second moments of psychological time. , 2001, Psychological bulletin.

[34]  C Fortin,et al.  Expecting a break in time estimation: attentional time-sharing without concurrent processing. , 2000, Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance.

[35]  T. Saxton,et al.  The role of interval underestimation in hyperactive children's failure to suppress responses over time , 1998, Behavioural Brain Research.

[36]  J Predebon,et al.  Time Judgments as a Function of Clock Duration: Effects of Temporal Paradigm and An Attention-Demanding Nontemporal Task , 1999, Perceptual and motor skills.

[37]  R. E. Hicks,et al.  Concurrent processing demands and the experience of time-in-passing , 1977 .

[38]  Dan Zakay,et al.  Chapter 10 Subjective Time and Attentional Resource Allocation: An Integrated Model of Time Estimation , 1989 .

[39]  J. Colombo.  Infants' detection of contingency: a cognitive-neuroscience perspective. , 2001, Bulletin of the Menninger Clinic.

[40]  G. A. Shaw,et al.  Arousal, time estimation, and time use in attention-disordered children , 1999 .

[41]  D. Zakay.  Time Estimation Methods—Do They Influence Prospective Duration Estimates? , 1993, Perception.

[42]  E D Curton,et al.  Effects of attentional focus and arousal on the time estimation. , 1974, Journal of experimental psychology.