Perceiving "outside the box" occurs early in development: evidence for boundary extension in three- to seven-month-old infants.
This investigation examined whether infants display boundary extension-a tendency to remember more of a visual scene than was presented. Three- to 7-month-olds were familiarized with a photograph of a visual scene, and tested with wide-angle versus close-up views of the scene. Infants preferred the close-up, indicating that they perceived the wide angle (the one consistent with boundary extension) as more familiar. Converging experiments showed that: (a) infants did not spontaneously prefer the close-up, (b) adults did not judge the wide angle to be more similar to the familiarization stimulus, and (c) infants spontaneously preferred the close-up when the photographs depicted outline objects without backgrounds. The findings suggest that infants anticipate information that lies beyond the borders of a scene view.
Quinn
Paul C
PC
Department of Psychology, University of Delaware, Newark, DE 19716, USA. pquinn@udel.edu
Intraub
Helene
H
D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D001288:Attention; D002755:Choice Behavior; D004215:Distance Perception; D005260:Female; D005364:Field Dependence-Independence; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D008297:Male; D011939:Mental Recall; D009949:Orientation; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D002666:Psychology, Child; D012858:Size Perception