The next talk in the CDC Seminar series will be given by Stefanie Hoehl, University of Heidelberg Date: March 2, 2011, 5 PM Location: Cognitive Development Center, Hattyú u. 14, 3rd floor Effects of social and non-social cues on infants' attention towards objects<http://www.ceu.hu/events/2011-03-02/effects-of-social-and-non-social-cues-on-infants-attention-towards-objects> Infants are sensitive to social cues such as eye gaze and emotional expressions from early on. In a series of studies we have examined the effects of emotional expressions and eye gaze cues on infants' attention towards objects using ERP. At three months of age infants show an increased Nc response for objects, which were previously presented with a fearful vs. neutral face looking towards the objects. This Nc effect was interpreted as reflecting increased attention to the fearfully cued objects. While we found no such effect for happy vs. neutral faces, a very similar effect was found for surprised vs. neutral faces. In a further series of studies we are comparing the effects of different social attention cues with non-social movement cues using ERP and eye tracking. Our results show that a turning head affects 4-month-olds subsequent neural responses and visual preferences for novel objects, while a turning car has no significant effect on infants' attention or visual preferences. Our findings suggest that even very young infants selectively use social cues to guide their attentional resources. _______________________________________________ Subscribe by sending an empty mail to seminars-subscribe(a)cdc.ceu.hu Unsubscribe by sending an empty mail to seminars-unsubscribe(a)cdc.ceu.hu