Infant habituation and generalization to differing degrees of stimulus novelty.

Abstract This study examined 4-month-old infants' fixation times to familiar and novel visual patterns. Thirty-two male and 32 female infants were given 12 successive 15 sec exposures to one simple geometric pattern followed by test trials consisting of two exposures to the same pattern, two to a pattern with the same form but novel color, two with a novel form but the same color, and two with both novel form and color. Results indicated habituation of fixation times to the repeated stimulus and recovery to novel stimuli, particularly in male infants. Generalization was also obtained with less recovery to patterns with only one dimension novel than to those with both novel. Most individual infants were also found to be attending to both dimensions rather than some infants attending mainly to color changes and others attending mainly to form changes.