A Cross-Cultural Analysis of Infants' Spatial Attention on the Infant Orienting With Attention (IOWA) Task

Research with Western samples has uncovered the rapid development of infants' visual attention. This study evaluated spatial attention in 6- to 9-month-old infants living in rural Malawi (N = 511; <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:semantics> <mml:mrow><mml:msub><mml:mi>n</mml:mi> <mml:mtext>Boys</mml:mtext></mml:msub> </mml:mrow> </mml:semantics> </mml:math> = 255, <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:semantics> <mml:mrow><mml:msub><mml:mi>n</mml:mi> <mml:mi>Yao</mml:mi></mml:msub> </mml:mrow> </mml:semantics> </mml:math> = 427) or suburban California, United States (N = 57, <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:semantics> <mml:mrow><mml:msub><mml:mi>n</mml:mi> <mml:mtext>Boys</mml:mtext></mml:msub> </mml:mrow> </mml:semantics> </mml:math> = 29, <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:semantics> <mml:mrow><mml:msub><mml:mi>n</mml:mi> <mml:mtext>White</mml:mtext></mml:msub> </mml:mrow> </mml:semantics> </mml:math> = 37) in 2018-2019. Using the Infant Orienting With Attention (IOWA) task, results showed that infants were faster and more accurate to fixate a target when a cue validly predicted the target location and were slower and less accurate when the cue was invalid. However, compared to US infants, Malawian infants took longer to fixate the target and were more accurate. These results both provide information about the development of spatial attention in an underrepresented population and demonstrate differences in spatial attention in infants with different lived experiences.