Object recognition and object segregation in 4.5-month-old infants.
Six experiments investigated how 4.5-month-old infants' perception of a display is affected by an immediate prior experience with an object similar to part of the test display. Prior research (A. Needham & R. Baillargeon, 1998) showed that when infants see an object alone and then see it next to a novel object, this prior experience allows them to determine the location of a boundary between the two objects. The present experiments investigated whether infants would also use an object similar, but not identical, to a test object in the same kind of task. The results indicate that infants' use of a prior experience is disrupted by changes in the features of the object, but not by a change in its spatial orientation. These findings suggest that, like adults, infants may expect that changes in the features of an object are associated with a change in the identity of the object, but do not have the same expectation for changes in spatial orientation.
Needham
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Department of Psychology, Duke University, Durham, NC 27708-0086, USA. needham@psych.duke.edu
D002657:Child Development; D003071:Cognition; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D007231:Infant, Newborn; D008297:Male; D002666:Psychology, Child