Part representation is not only critical to object perception but also plays a key role in a number of basic visual cognition functions, such as figure-ground segregation, allocation of attention, and memory for shapes. Yet, virtually nothing is known about the development of part representation. If parts are fundamental components of object shape…

Two experiments examined the effects of multimodal presentation and stimulus familiarity on auditory and visual processing. In Experiment 1, 10-month-olds were habituated to either an auditory stimulus, a visual stimulus, or an auditory-visual multimodal stimulus. Processing time was assessed during the habituation phase, and discrimination of…

Sensitivity to shape changes was measured, in particular detection of convexity and concavity changes. The available data are contradictory. The author used a change detection task and simple polygons to systematically manipulate convexity/concavity. Performance was high for detecting a change of sign (a new concave vertex along a convex contour…

The analysis of I-scale preference orders of 71 infants (2 to 9 months old) to four face-like stimuli suggested a common J-scale stimulus ordering for each of four age groups. Changes in I-scale frequencies were used as a measure of age-related changes in preference orders. (MS)

The main objective of the present investigations was to determine whether or not young human infants see the physical spectrum in a categorical fashion as human adults and animals who possess color vision regularly do. (Author)

Four studies were conducted to investigate the relation between audition and vision in the human newborn. In all four studies visual activity was recorded with infrared corneal-reflection techniques in 1- to 4-day-old infants. (MS)

Visual object processing in infancy is often described as proceeding from an early stage in which object features are processed independently to a later stage in which relations between features are taken into account (e.g., Cohen, 1998). Here we present the Representational Acuity Hypothesis, which argues that this behavioral shift can be…

Since the mid-1800s, experimental psychologists have been using eye movements and gaze direction to make inferences about perception and cognition in adults (Muller, 1826, cited in Boring, 1942). In the past 175 years, these oculomotor measures have been refined (see Kowler, 1990) and used to address similar questions in infants (see Aslin, 1985,…

The relation between perceptual organization and categorization processes in 3- and 4-month-olds was explored. The question was whether an invariant part abstracted during category learning could interfere with Gestalt organizational processes. A 2003 study by Quinn and Schyns had reported that an initial category familiarization experience in…

Much of what psychologists know about infant perception and cognition is based on habituation, but the process itself is still poorly understood. Here the authors offer a dynamic field model of infant visual habituation, which simulates the known features of habituation, including familiarity and novelty effects, stimulus intensity effects, and…

Infants' ability to track temporarily occluded objects that moved on circular trajectories was investigated in 20 infants using a longitudinal design. They were first seen at 6 months and then every 2nd month until the end of their 1st year. Infants were presented with occlusion events covering 20% of the target's trajectory (effective occlusion…

A fundamental question of perceptual development concerns how infants come to perceive partly hidden objects as unified across a spatial gap imposed by an occluder. Much is known about the time course of development of perceptual completion during the first several months after birth, as well as some of the visual information that supports unity…

Three studies investigated the role of surface attributes in infants' identification of agents, using a habituation paradigm designed to tap infants' interpretation of grasping as goal directed (Woodward, 1998). When they viewed a bare human hand grasping objects, 7- and 12-month-old infants focused on the relation between the hand and its goal.…

The aim of this article is to introduce readers to an alternative way of applying U-shaped functions to understand development, especially cognitive development. In classical developmental applications, age is the abscissa; that is, in the fundamental equation B = f(A), some behavioral variable (B) plots as a U-shaped or inverted U-shaped function…