Electrophysiological Cross-Modality Comparisons of Infant Individual Differences in Holistic Processing and Selective Inhibition

Holistic, (global) processing refers to the integration of local stimulus features into a larger perceptual form with an interpretation independent of its parts. While global precedence is the norm for adults, infants’ perception depends greatly upon individual differences. Using a novel auditory AX-CPT (AX Continuous Performance Task) this study examined congruence between auditory and visual holistic processing in 6 month-olds as measured by saccade latency and look duration. The task was designed so that holistic processing impaired performance. Results confirmed congruence between modalities with impaired performance of visual holisticprocessors on trials which punished auditory holistic processing, despite previous findings of increased recognition memory in these infants. Current findings are explored in the context of a proposed inhibitory mechanism accounting for individual differences. Finally, computational models are explored, supportive of a first-order stochastic differential equation for changes in looking behavior across trials, similar to the Rescorla-Wagner model. Cross Modality Holistic Processing 3