Infants' recognition of contour-deleted figures.
Infants' recognition of contour-deleted figures was investigated in four experiments using a habituation procedure. The results indicate that 12-month-old infants could recognize line drawings of figures that were missing 33%, 50%, or even as much as 66% of their contour. This was so whether the contour-deleted versions were used on habituation or on test: Intact figures were recognized after habituation to contour-deleted exemplars, and in most cases contour-deleted ones were recognized after habituation to the intact figure. The single failure appeared to be due to difficulty in discriminating between two extremely impoverished test stimuli. Findings from the final experiment, in which infants recognized complements of contour-deleted stimuli but not scrambled versions, suggested that they fill in the gaps of the contour-deleted figures so as to create a figural whole.
Rose
S A
SA
Department of Pediatrics, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx, New York 10461, USA. srose@aecom.yu.edu
Jankowski
J J
JJ
Senior
G J
GJ
D005260:Female; D006185:Habituation, Psychophysiologic; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D008297:Male; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual