A number of studies are proposed for investigating how infants form """"""""schemas"""""""" or mental representations of visual stimuli they encounter, and for identifying factors which may facilitate or impede the formation of such schemas. The overall approach of the proposed research is to identify systematic relationships between the nature of the visual information available (the input) and later memory performance (the output), so that inferences regarding the cognitive processes which mediate input and output may be drawn. In one series of studies, the memory performances (i.e., responses to novelty) of infants offered a """"""""contrast"""""""" stimulus during familiarization will be compared to those of infants familiarized with pairs of identical stimuli. Whether the opportunity to compare the to-be-remembered stimulus with another during familiarization facilitates later recognition of its features will be determined, and the specific nature of such facilitation will be examined. Another study is designed to investigate the influence that the type of test procedure may have on infants' memory performance, separate from or in combination with the nature of the familiarization experience. The responses to novelty of infants tested with simultaneous presentations of familiar and novel stimuli will be compared to those of infants tested with successive presentations, to determine whether simultaneous test presentations afford an advantage for memory performance. In the final study proposed, the time course of stimulus processing will be investigated. Infants will be shown a series of brief presentations of paired stimuli; one of these will appear unchanged over the sequence of trials, while the other will be a different novel stimulus on each trial. The infants' relative preferences for the familiar and novel stimulus will be assessed on successive blocks of trials, so that the development and sequence of these preferences can be traced. The interactions of stimulus complexity and subject age with the time course of processing will also be investigated with this procedure. In all of the studies proposed, aspects of the infants' looking behavior will be monitored during familiarization trials as well as on test trials, so that we may identify distinct patterns of study during familiarization which might account for any observed differences in memory performance. The results of the proposed research should advance our knowledge of infant information processing, i.e., of what goes on """"""""in the infant's head"""""""" as perceiving and remembering occur.
