Habituation Rate and the Infant's Response to Visual Discrepancies

Author(s): Robert B. McCall, Pamela S. Hogarty, Jayne S. Hamilton and John H. Vincent
Source: Child Development, Vol. 44, No. 2 (Jun., 1973), pp. 280-287
Published by: Wiley on behalf of the Society for Research in Child Development
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Habituation Rate and the Infant's Response
to Visual Discrepancies

Robert B. McCall, Pamela S. Hogarty, Jayne S. Hamilton,

and John H. Vincent
Fels Research Institute

MCCALL, ROBERT B.; HOGARTY, PAMELA S.; HAMILTON, JAYNE S.; and VINCENT, JOHN H.
Habituation Rate and the Infant's Response to Visual Discrepancies. CHILD DEVELOPMENT,
1973, 44, 280-287. A simple visual stimulus was repeatedly presented to 120 infants 12 and 18
weeks of age until visual fixation reached a habituation criterion. A discrepant stimulus fol-
lowed that varied in its magnitude of discrepancy from the familiar standard. In contrast to
the age effects observed for the rate of habituation (though they interacted with specific
stimuli), there were no age differences in the distribution of fixation times to the several
magnitudes of discrepancy. Infants who habituated rapidly displayed an inverted-U curve of
fixation as a function of discrepancy in accord with the discrepancy hypothesis, whereas slow
habituators gave their maximum response to the largest discrepancy.

An attractive hypothesis in the study of tion) trials were presented. "Rapid-habituating"

the distribution of attention in the human in- infants apparently had habituated to asymptote
fant suggests that the rate of behavioral habitu- but slow habituators had not when the new
ation displayed 'by the infant to the repeated stimulus was introduced. Since habituation rate
presentation of a simple stimulus is a partial is an individual difference variable, it is not
reflection of the internal process of acquiring clear from these data which factor actually
some memory engram for that stimulus (e.g., caused the differential response to discrepancy
Lewis 1969; McCall 1971; Sokolov 1963). -the cognitive nature of the memory engram
Possibly, infants who show habituation are en- at the time the discrepancy was introduced or
coding the stimulus and in some sense have a some characteristic of the infant that operated
"better" memory of it than infants who do not both on the process of habituation and the
habituate. response to discrepancy. However, if slow-
habituating subjects were allowed to view re-
Several studies, using visual and auditory
peated presentations of the standard until they,
stimuli, long and short familiarization periods, too, reached an asymptote of responding, and
and a variety of response measures, have indi- if these subjects did respond differentially to
cated that those 3-6-month-old infants who
discrepancies under these conditions, then the
habituate evidence greater (or more mature) interpretation based upon the cognitive status
response patterns to novel or discrepant stimuli of the engram would be favored. An initial
than those who do not habituate (McCall
study using auditory stimuli suggests this might
1972; McCall & Kagen 1970; McCall & Melson be the case (A. B. Horowitz 1972). Thus, a
1969; Melson & McCall 1970). While this is
major purpose of the present experiment was
not the only evidence nor are all the data to investigate the response to several magni-
entirely consistent (see McCall 1971), the tudes of visual discrepancies as a function of
proposition that habituation reflects engram habituation rate under conditions in which all
acquisition seems plausible under some circum- infants were habituated to a common be-
stances.
havioral criterion.
However, in all of the studies cited above,
a fixed number of familiarization (or habitua- A second purpose was to examine the
This research supported by grant HD 04160 to R. B. M., by grants RR 05537 and FR 00222
to the Fels Research Institute, by the Grant Foundation of New York, and by the Fels Fund
of Philadelphia. We thank Darryl Bloom and Nancy Hurlburt for their help in pilot work and
Joanne Peterson for preparing the manuscript. Reprints may be requested from Robert B.
McCall, Fels Research Institute, Yellow Springs, Ohio 45387.
[Child Development, 1973, 44, 280-287. @ 1973 by the Society for Research in Child Development, Inc. All
rights reserved.]

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magnitude of discrepancy represented by the
novel stimulus as a possible determinant of
attentional behavior. The discrepancy hypothe-
sis (e.g., see McCall 1971) predicts attentional
behavior to be an inverted-U function of the
magnitude of discrepancy. Such a curvilinear
relationship presumably reflects the intersection
of two vectors: (1) increasing attention with
increasing amounts of information, and (2)
decreasing attention as the stimulus information
becomes more difficult to process by existing
cognitive structures and integrated with estab-
lished engrams.
Empirically, the inverted-U prediction is
troublesome because there is no theoretical
basis for deciding how much stimulus discrep-
ancy is sufficient to produce the downturn in
the response curve (Thomas 1971). Thus, al-
though some studies of infant attention have
observed the complete inverted-U function
(McCall 1972; McCall & Melson 1969), others
have only hinted at it (McCall & Kagan 1967)
or found a simple linearly increasing relation-
ship (McCall & Kagan 1970) between dis-
crepancy and response. All of these results
might be consonant with the discrepancy hy-
pothesis, depending upon the subject's percep-
tion of the degree of discrepancy represented
by the set of experimental stimuli. A linear
versus curvilinear result not only depends upon
the particular stimuli-it might also depend
upon the character of the memory engram, per-
ceptual-cognitive style of the subject (i.e.,
rapid vs. slow habituator), age of the infant,
etc. Thus, it was of interest to explore the rela-
tive response to a dimension of discrepancy as
a function of sex, age, and habituation rate.
Another purpose was to focus on possible
age differences in habituation and response to
discrepancy. Younger infants have been found
to habituate more slowly than older subjects
(e.g., Fantz 1964; Lewis 1969; McGurk 1972).
Further, several studies indicate that infants do
not respond to a discrepancy more than to a
familiar event until approximately 2 months
of age (see McCall 1971), but this depends
upon the assessment procedures (Siqueland
1969). An experimental design that habituates
infants to a criterion could assess age differ-
ences in habituation separately from age differ-
ences in the response to several magnitudes
of discrepancy.
Finally, some investigators have observed
sex differences in habituation to simple visual
stimuli (Horowitz & Paden 1969; Meyers &
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McCall et al. 281
Cantor 1966; Pancratz & Cohen 1970), and
some have found sex differences in the response
to novel stimuli (e.g., Meyers & Cantor 1967;
Pancratz & Cohen 1970).
Method
Subjects
Subjects, 12 and 18 weeks of age, were
recruited by sending letters to parents whose
names appeared in the newspaper birth an-
nouncements. Approximately 12% of the let-
ters resulted in contacts, and a total of 157
infants were seen. However, 37 subjects were
not included in the data analysis: 20 because
of fretting and lack of cooperation, 10 due to
equipment and operator failure, and 7 because
of other circumstances (i.e., had abnormal
medical histories, fell asleep, etc.). The re-
maining 120 infants formed the sample for
these observations, and their characteristics are
presented in table 1.
Procedure
Stimuli.-The stimuli are presented in
figure 1. They were professionally photo-
graphed (in color) and rear projected by an
Airequipt 350/EF projector with a 500-w
lamp. The diameter of the circular element of
the stimulus was 10 inches, and was located
approximately 24 inches from the subject's
eyes. A stimulus consisted of a black circle
with a white interior on a yellow background.
In the center of each circle was an arrow,
which was either a saturated blue (stimulus
A), blue green (stimulus B), saturated green
(stimulus C), or yellow green (stimulus D).
Unfortunately, the photography minimized the
distinctiveness of these color differentials. The
stimuli were conceived to form a dimension of
similarity in the alphabetical order presented in
figure 1.
General procedure.-All observations were
TABLE 1
SAMPLE CHARACTERISTICS (N = 120)
Characteristic Males Females
Firstborn ............ ..... 25 20
No birth anesthetic ........ 7 13
Abnormal birth positiona ... 6 5
Breast-fedb ................ 21 27
Complicated pregnancy ..... 3 7
Birth weight (oz) .......... 124.9 118.1
Parental educatione ........ 14.4 14.5
SBreach, transverse, other.
b Includes all subjects not totally bottle-fed.
C 12 years equals high school graduate.
282 Child Development
FIG. 1.-Stimuli conceived to be on a scale of relative similarity to one another
performed in a mobile laboratory, located in the
parking lots of various shopping centers. Moth-
ers provided their own transportation but were
paid $2.00 and given Polaroid pictures of their
children. When mother and infant arrived the
general experimental procedure was explained
and a few biographical details were secured.
Then the infant was placed in an infant seat
situated on a table surrounded by walls on
three sides, one of which included the stimulus
projection area. The mother was seated to the
right and rear of the S.
Once the infant was comfortable in the
seat, the stimulus series began. A standard
stimulus was presented until a behavioral cri-
terion of habituation was reached (see below),
then the subject saw the sequence dssds in
which d was a discrepant stimulus and s was
the familiar standard. Following Horowitz and
Paden (1969), a stimulus was presented until
the infant fixated it and remained on until the
child looked away. At this point the stimulus
field went dark, and 5 seconds elapsed before
the next stimulus was shown.
The child's visual fixation was recorded by
an observer who pushed a button when the
stimulus was reflected in the child's pupil. The
timing was recorded by Cramer digital clocks
(.1-sec accuracy). The previously estimated
reliability for this coding was .99 (McCall
1972).
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Habituation criterion.-The infant was
said to have reached criterion when he looked
at the stimulus for 3 seconds or less on two
consecutive trials following the first five pre-
sentations. Once the criterion was reached, the
discrepant stimulus sequence described above
(i.e., dssds) was introduced without interrup-
tion.
Experimental design.-The total sample
was divided into an "experimental" sample
(N = 96), which was presented a discrepant
stimulus on the trial following the attainment
of the habituation criterion- and a "control"
sample (N = 24), which was presented the
same familiar standard on the trial subsequent
to reaching criterion. The control sample was
considered a "zero discrepancy" condition and
represented a check against the possibility that
the response to a discrepant stimulus might be
a regression to a mean response level following
a chance decline.
The experimental Ss were equally divided
according to sex, age (12 vs. 18 weeks, -?- 1
week), standard stimulus (i.e., whether stimu-
lus A or D in fig. 1 was the familiar standard),
and magnitude of discrepancy (three arbitrary
magnitudes produced by presenting stimulus B,
C, or D if the standard was A; or stimulus C,
B, or A if the standard was D). The control Ss
were similarly divided, but all constituted the
zero discrepancy condition. Thus, the basic
 McCall et al. 283

design was a sex X age (12, 18 weeks) X
standard stimulus (A, D) X magnitude of
discrepancy (0,1,2,3) matrix.
Results
Habituation
Although Ss were given as many familiar-
ization trials as necessary to reach criterion, all
Ss were required to view at least seven presen-
tations of the standard. Ordinarily, such data
might be analyzed with an age (12, 18) x
sex x standard stimulus (vertical, horizontal
arrow) X trials (7) repeated measures analysis
of variance. However, because fixation time
across the seven trials was not homogeneously
correlated (i.e., there was heterogeneity of co-
variance), this conventional analysis would
yield results which were seriously biased in a
positive direction (see McCall & Appelbaum
in press] for a nontechnical discussion of this
issue and alternative procedures). Another ap-
proach, not dependent upon the nature of the
covariances, involves analyzing the within-sub-
jects effects by submitting the six orthogonal
polynomial contrasts for trials for each S to an
age x sex X standard stimulus multivariate
analysis of variance (see McCall [1970] for a
brief description of multivariate analysis of
variance). Since Ss could look at the stimulus
without time constraint, the data were trans-
formed by X' = loglo X.
The principal result of the above analysis
was an age X standard stimulus x trials in-
teraction, Fmult (6,107) = 2.16, p = .05,
which was largely a difference in quadratic
trend in the habituation curves of these groups,
F (1,112) = 7.99, p = .006.
These data are plotted in figure 2. Note
that the two 18-week groups tended to have
shorter fixation times from the first trial and
more regular and shallower habituation curves,
but the difference in general length of fixation
between the ages was much greater for Ss
viewing the horizontal than the vertically ori-
ented standard stimulus, age x standard,
F(1,112) = 8.82, p = .004. There was also a
sex X standard x trials interaction, FmuIt
(6,107), p = .01, but this was a difference in
the sixth-degree trend contrast, F(1,112) =
15.11, p < .001, in which females viewing the
horizontal standard showed an isolated dip in
looking on the fourth trial. Apart from this
unexplained deflection, there were no sex dif-
ferences of the type reported by Pancratz and
Cohen (1970).
The number of stimulus presentations
(trials) and the total time spent looking at the

0-0 horizontal
? ? 12 week AmA vertical
.70 0A EsA
18 week o . .6 horizontal
vertical

X
U6

.50

.60

Z .40 *

.30 mmmmm 0000

.J00

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

TRIALS

FIG. 2.-Log fixation time during the required seven-trial familiarization period as a function of age
and standard stimulus.

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284 Child Development
standard prior to reaching criterion were two
additional indices of the rate of habituation.
These two measures were submitted to a multi-
variate analysis of variance with sex, standard
stimulus, and age as independent variables
(N = 15 per cell). A multivariate analysis of
variance is an extension of univariate analysis
of variance to consider the weighted combina-
tion of several variables (in this case, two).
There was a significant multivariate effect
for age, Fmnit (2,111) = 5.07, p = .008, in
which the time measure reached univariate
significance, F(1,112) = 9.65, p = .002.
However, this effect was qualified by a stan-
dard X age interaction, Fmut (2,111) = 3.38,
p = .037, with both the time, F(1,112) =
6.58, p = .012, and trials, F(1,112) = 4.90,
p = .029, variables having univariate signifi-
cance. There were no effects attributable to sex,
p's > .29. The means are presented in table 2.
Viewed collectively, these habituation
data only partially support the expected age
difference in which older Ss habituate more
rapidly than younger ones: such a result was
dependent upon the nature of the stimulus,
and habituation rate cannot be easily separated
from initial response level when the magnitude
of the response asymptotically approaches the
lower bound (i.e., 0) of the measurement scale
near the end of the familiarization period.
For the purpose of examining differences
in the response to discrepancy as a function of
habituation rate, Ss were divided at the median
within each age x standard stimulus condi-
tion. The median split into rapid and slow
habituators was made on the basis of the trials
to criterion, since it was felt that the number
of new introductions of a stimulus receiving
substantial looking was possibly a more salient
index of rate of engram acquisition than the
TABLE 2
TRIALS AND FIXATION TIME (SECONDS) TO
HABITUATION BY AGE AND STANDARD
STIMULUS
AGE (WEEKS)
12 18
Stimulus A:
Trials ................. 8.87 9.20
Time ................. 38.08 34.48
Stimulus D:
Trials ................. 11.67 8.83
Time ................. 70.08 32.40
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slow
.70
.60
S.0so
.4017
.30
0
- .20
rapid
.10
0 1 2 3
MAGNITUDE OF DISCREPANCY
FIG. 3.-Log fixation time as a function of
magnitude of discrepancy for rapid and slow
habituators.
total time spent looking. Infants reaching the
criterion in seven trials (the minimum num-
ber) were defined to be rapid habituators and
the remaining Ss were slow habituators, except
in the 12-week-standard-stimulus-D group in
which rapid habituators were those Ss reaching
criterion in nine or fewer trials.
Only 17 of the 120 Ss looked longer on
the first than their last familiarization trial, and
nine of these were classified as rapid, eight as
slow, habituators. The average log fixation to
the first two standards was .53 for slow habitu-
ators and .44 for rapid habituators. Both these
figures are substantially higher than the zero-
discrepancy groups' responses to the first dis-
crepancy (i.e., the standard) given in figure 3
below. Thus, both rapid and slow groups did
in fact habituate.
Rapid and slow habituators were then
compared for differences on the sample char-
acteristics indicated in table 1. Other results
(McCall 1972) have suggested that rapid
habituators in a long-term familiarization para-
digm have more highly educated parents than
slow habituators. While the parents of rapid
habituators in the present study averaged one-
half year more education than the parents of
slow habituators, the difference was not signifi-
cant, t (118) = 1.28. There were no other
differences observed between these groups.
Response to Discrepancy
The differential response to a discrepant
stimulus was assessed by performing an age

(12 vs. 18 weeks) X habituation group (rapid
vs. slow) X magnitude of discrepancy (0,1,2,
3) analysis of variance. Preliminary analyses
indicated no effects or interactions of these
factors with sex or standard stimulus, and con-
sequently these variables were ignored in the
analyses that follow. The entire five-way anal-
ysis could not be performed because some cells
would have been vacant.
As with the habituation data, the depen-
dent variable was the log10 fixation time. Inas-
much as previous studies had indicated that
stimulus differences were likely only on the
response to the first presentation of a dis-
crepancy (e.g., McCall & Kagan 1970), log
fixation times to the first and second discrepant
stimuli were analyzed separately. There were
no significant differences on the second dis-
crepancy. Because all Ss were habituated to a
common criterion prior to the introduction of a
discrepant stimulus, the response to the discrep-
ant stimulus alone was the dependent variable
(rather than a discrepant-minus-previous-stan-
dard change score). However, to insure that
results were not a function of differences in
response style and "initial values," the analyses
were repeated using the response to the stan-
dard immediately preceding the first discrep-
ancy as a covariate as suggested by Cronbach
and Furby (1970).
The analysis of variance indicated three
effects: magnitude of discrepancy, F (3,104) =
3.26, p = .025; habituation group, F(1,104)
= 12.29, p < .001; and a habituation group-
magnitude of discrepancy interaction, F (3,104)
= 3.31, p = .023. Each of these effects was
also significant (at only slightly larger proba-
bilities) when the response to the previous
standard was covaried. There were no age
effects or interactions (two of three F's < 1).
The results are presented in figure 3. The
habituation-group main effect suggested that
slow habituators looked longer than rapid
habituators. However, figure 3 indicates the
general discrepancy effect was a blend of at
least two components, one coming from the
rapid- and one from the slow-habituating in-
fants. The rapid habituators displayed an
inverted-U function in accord with the dis-
crepancy hypothesis. This was reflected in a
significant quadratic trend, F (1,104) = 5.60,
p = .022, which was the only statistically re-
liable pattern. In contrast, the slow habituators
responded most to the largest magnitude of
discrepancy. Despite the apparent inflection in
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McCall et al. 285
the curve for slow habituators, the only signifi-
cant trend was linear, F(1,104) = 9.01, p =
.003.
Discussion
These data contain two major results.
First, infants who habituated rapidly to a
simple stimulus pattern looked maximally at a
pattern representing a moderate amount of
discrepancy from the familiarized stimulus,
while infants who required more trials to reach
an habituation criterion displayed their maxi-
mum looking to a relatively more discrepant
stimulus. Second, although older infants habitu-
ated more rapidly than younger subjects (only
for the horizontal standard stimulus), there
were no age differences or interactions with
magnitude of discrepancy, F < 1, in the re-
sponse to discrepancies.
At first thought, the rapid-slow habitua-
tion results appear to be in conflict with
previous data (e.g., McCall & Kagan 1970)
which indicated that rapid but not slow habitu-
ators responded positively to discrepant stimuli.
Because the previous studies used a fixed num-
ber of familiarization trials regardless of the
infant's behavior, these results can be viewed
as quite consistent. Collectively, they suggest
that if an infant has not habituated to a
stimulus, he will not respond positively to a
discrepant event and may even display relative
gaze avoidance to moderately discrepant
stimuli (e.g., McCall 1972; McCall & Kagen
1970). However, if such infants are permitted
to view the standard until they reach a be-
havioral criterion of habituation, they will
respond to discrepancies, and slow habituators
may respond more to larger magnitudes of
discrepancy than rapid habituators.
The cognitive implications of long looking
at a very discrepant stimulus are not known.
Such behavior may represent relative advance-
ment-perhaps a better memory of the stan-
dard is present and/or the infant is somehow
capable of processing very discrepant stimulus
information. Conversely, these infants may
simply be slow to habituate or "tune out" a
stimulus they cannot readily process. Data from
another context (McCall 1972) tentatively sug-
gest that gaze avoidance of extreme discrepan-
cies may be more characteristic of older infants
and thus represent a more developmentally
mature response pattern.
Regardless of one's position on this con-
286 Child Development
ceptual issue, the data have several implica-
tions. First, the results are consistent with the
proposition that the nature of habituation may
reflect some aspect of the internal process of
acquiring a memory engram for the standard
stimulus. Infants who habituate, respond posi-
tively to new stimuli; if the discrepancy is
introduced before habituation is relatively com-
plete, the subject does not respond positively
to discrepancies.1
A second feature of these data is the clear
inverted-U result displayed by the rapid habitu-
ators. The fact that two different standards
were used without an interaction with magni-
tude of discrepancy accentuates the role of
discrepancy per se, apart from specific physical
stimulus characteristics, as the causal factor.
Moreover, the observation that the trend was
linear for slow habituators but curvilinear for
rapid habituators agreed with other results
(McCall 1972) in suggesting that the form of
the obtained relationship will not only depend
upon the particular levels of discrepancy used
but habituation and/or subject characteristics.
This result joins with other data (McCall 1972;
McCall & Melson 1969) in indicating that a
curvilinear function may be the basic under-
lying relationship between attention and dis-
crepancy, and that observations of a linear
trend may derive from using stimuli which do
not represent a sufficient range of discrepancies.
Unfortunately, there is no a priori theoretical
definition of "sufficient," but this conceptual
inelegance does not obviate the potential em-
pirical validity of the inverted-U prediction
(Thomas 1971).
While previous experiments have demon-
strated that habituation rate is a function of age
(e.g., Lewis 1969; McGurk 1972) and stimulus
complexity (e.g., Caron & Caron 1968), the
results of the present study suggest a possible
interaction between age and stimulus proper-
ties. While an age x complexity dependency
might be expected, the stimuli in the present
study did not obviously differ in complexity as
usually defined. A speculative explanation of
why age differences occurred more clearly for
the horizontal relative to the vertical arrow
might be rooted in the propensity of very young
infants to scan horizontally more than vertically
(Salapatek 1968). Thus, it may be that 12-
week-old infants are as able as 18-weekers to
process a stimulus whose major feature presents
its contours directly to such a horizontal scan-
ning strategy. However, when the arrow is
horizontal, examination of its contours requires
a more sophisticated scanning strategy, and
age differences are more obvious.
No sex differences in habituation rate were
observed, despite the fact that others have
found more rapid habituation to simple visual
stimuli for boys than girls (e.g., Pancratz &
Cohen 1970).
Finally, the fact that age differences were
present for habituation but not the response to
discrepancy suggests that whatever develop-
mental processes transpire between 12 and 18
weeks they may have relatively greater in-
fluence on encoding information into the mem-
ory system and related processes than on
retrieving perceptual-cognitive information and
using it to interact with new stimuli. Other
data are consistent with such a hypothesis. For
example, Papousek (1961) has shown that
while there were marked age differences in the
acquisition rate of conditioning infant head
rotation, the process of extinction was remark-
ably similar across several ages in the first year
of life. Campbell and Spear (1972) have re-
cently reviewed the animal literature on learn-
ing and development and conclude that while
there are age differences in the retention of a
conditioned avoidance response there are no
differences in rate of extinction. Finally, Sique-
land (1969) reported a study using 1- and 4-
month-old infants who were given pacifiers
which, when sucked, would present or termi-
nate a visual stimulus. Once asymptotic re-
sponding was achieved, a new visual stimulus
was suddenly introduced as a reinforcer. While
the general level of response differed for the
two age groups, there was no interaction be-
tween age and the relative increase in sucking
in response to the new stimulus. Although
there must be age differences under some cir-
cumstances, these studies suggest a minimum
age effect within the first year of life for be-
haviors requiring some comparison with an
already learned perceptual or associative mem-
ory engram.

1 It should be noted that the "short-looking" group in McCall and Kagan (1970) which
apparently did not habituate in the graph presented in that paper actually did habituate.
Because the first stimulus appeared to scare subjects, it was not included in the habituation
analysis. If it were included, the "short lookers" would have habituated by the second trial,
the "rapid habituators" by the fifth trial, and the "slow habituators" not at all. Thus, these
groups should more properly be called "most rapid," "rapid," and "nonhabituators."

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Thus, it is plausible that developmental
processes during this age period have their
paramount influence on encoding rather than
retrieval. This is a compelling hypothesis from
an evolutionary standpoint. The perceptual-
cognitive apparatus of the young infant ap-
parently screens out much of the "buzzing
confusion" once thought prevalent by making it
relatively difficult for a stimulus to be encoded
into the memory system. However, if the con-
ditions are right so that an event is encoded,
then the perceptual-cognitive system of the
young infant may be quite effective in retriev-
ing that memory and using it to interact with
new stimuli.
References
Campbell, B. A., & Spear, N. E. Ontogeny of
memory. Psychological Review, 1972, 79, 215-
236.
Caron, R. F., & Caron, A. J. The effects of re-
peated exposure and stimulus complexity on
visual fixation in infants. Psychonomic Science,
1968, 10, 207-208.
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