Research reportInfant visual attention and object recognition

•Infant visual attention and object recognition are closely related.•The bulk of research on infant attention and recognition memory is based on preferential looking tasks.•Infants demonstrate increased voluntary control of attention across infancy as well as major gains in recognition memory.•The Nc and late slow ERP components serve as neural correlates of infant attention and object recognition.

This paper explores the role visual attention plays in the recognition of objects in infancy. Research and theory on the development of infant attention and recognition memory are reviewed in three major sections. The first section reviews some of the major findings and theory emerging from a rich tradition of behavioral research utilizing preferential looking tasks to examine visual attention and recognition memory in infancy. The second section examines research utilizing neural measures of attention and object recognition in infancy as well as research on brain-behavior relations in the early development of attention and recognition memory. The third section addresses potential areas of the brain involved in infant object recognition and visual attention. An integrated synthesis of some of the existing models of the development of visual attention is presented which may account for the observed changes in behavioral and neural measures of visual attention and object recognition that occur across infancy.