Serial habituation in two-, three-, and four-month-old infants.

Serial habituation of visual fixations in 2-, 3-, and 4-month-old infants was investigated through a design permitting cross-sectional, within-subject longitudinal, cohort longitudinal, and time-lag analyses. The components of the standard stimulus were displayed individually before and after successive exposures of the standard for familiarization. Relative saliencies of the components for each child were indexed by magnitude of responding to these parts in the initial presentation. Comparisons of the pre- and postexposure fixation times suggest that for all ages habituation was under way to the parts of the stimulus in orders of the relative saliencies. The nature of the data in general did not appear to be influenced significantly by any 1 methodology.