Thinking About Looking Time

[derek]

You may have gathered that I'm a bit of a looking time malcontent.

I recently noticed that the data in Spelke's Origins of Knowledge paper actually adds to my misgivings in an important way. Take a look at Figure 3. What's going on with the looking times in the experimental group?

It looks to me like a habituation effect. Infants find the impossible outcome surprising the first time they see it, but not after that. This is pretty important because so many infant studies have repeated trials with impossible displays. We should bear in mind that infants responses may change pretty dramatically throughout such an experiment.

Any thoughts on this? Are there alternatives to looking time or are we stuck with it?
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