Human Growth and Development / Unit 3 HGD 0357 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
How Infant Minds Are Measured
The idea
Because infants cannot answer questions, researchers read their minds from behaviour. In habituation studies, a stimulus is repeated until the infant's response declines; if a new stimulus then revives the response, the infant has noticed a difference. In preferential looking, two stimuli are shown side by side, and longer looking at one shows a preference, usually for the novel one. Heart rate, which slows when an infant attends, eye tracking, including pupil dilation, and EEG add further measures.
In practice
A baby habituated to one face perking up at a new one: evidence the baby can tell the two apart.
Where people slip
The misconception is that an infant who loses interest has stopped learning. Habituation is itself the evidence that learning occurred. These measures matter beyond infancy: faster habituation in infancy predicts later intelligence, which links this method to the exam's topic of intelligence across the lifespan.
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