title: Developmental changes in the contextual control of recognition.
abstract: In three experiments, we explored potential developmental differences in the contextual control of target recognition using elementary perceptual features that differed only in their spatial relations. Three- and 6-month-old infants were trained in the presence of black horizontal and vertical line segments arranged as Ls, Ts, or +s on a pink background and were tested in the presence of the same line segments in a different spatial arrangement. At both ages, target recognition required a match between the primitive perceptual features in the test context and those present during training. Delayed recognition by younger but not older infants also required a match between specific spatial arrangements of the horizontal and vertical segments (+s versus Ls or Ts), despite the fact that infants of both ages had initially encoded these relations. These data suggest that by 6 months, spatial information in the periphery is detected preattentively via a parallel-processing mechanism, as it is in children and adults.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ 08903, USA.
authors.forename: L A
authors.initials: LA
authors.lastname: Earley
authors.forename: R S
authors.initials: RS
authors.lastname: Bhatt
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Rovee-Collier
mesh_terms: D000367:Age Factors; D001245:Association Learning / Q000502:physiology*; D003463:Cues; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D008297:Male; D012153:Retention, Psychology / Q000502:physiology*