ABSTRACT
The phenomenon of habituation has received widespread attention among ob servers of infant behavior, who have regarded it as a means to study cognitive processes and their development over time. The impetus for this approach came from Soviet work (Bronshtein et al, 1958; Sokolov, 1963) and animal experi mentation (Sharpless & Jasper, 1956; Thompson & Spencer, 1966; Thorpe, 1963). Unlike the animal research which has been interested in the habituation phenomenon per se, research on infants has employed the habituation paradigm primarily for the study of other phenomena. The two primary purposes of the majority of infant habituation experiments have been: (1) to study the learning capacity of the infant by using a process that has been labeled by many as the simplest form of learning; and (2) to assess the infant’s capacity to discriminate various stimuli by introducing novel stimuli following habituation. Recently, a third reason for studying habituation has been advocated by Lewis (1971), McCall (1971), and Kagan (1971). These authors contend that habituation may be used as a tool both to assess the infant’s current cognitive processing and to predict future cognitive abilities. They suggest that habituation parameters reflect the efficiency with which the brain processes environmental events, allowing an infant’s performance on a habituation task to be used as a predictor of mental functioning in other situations.
