Assessing the primary moments in infant encoding of compound visual stimuli

In order to assess whether the chromatic and spatial components of visual stimuli are initially encoded in a compound way, a backward-masking procedure was used in a series of five experiments involving 60 infants (M age = 23 weeks, SD = 3.9). The duration of encoding intervals was varied across the experiments, but in all cases, infants were familiarized to a bicolored stimulus followed after each exposure by a masking stimulus. Encoding of the target stimulus was subsequently assessed on tests pairing this stimulus either with its chromatic reversal or with an identical pattern in new colors. The pattern of test performance across the five experiments indicated that infants were able to encode the colors of the target stimulus in correct spatial locations but may not necessarily do so from the earliest phases of response.