title: Volume completion in 4.5-month-old infants.
abstract: In this study, we examined 4.5-month-old infants' visual completion of self-occluding three-dimensional objects. A previous study on this topic reported that 6-month-old, but not 4-month-old infants extrapolate a convex, symmetric prism from a limited view of its surfaces (Soska & Johnson, 2008). As of yet, studies on the development of amodal completion of three-dimensional, self-occluding objects are scarce. Given 4-month-old infants' abilities to derive three-dimensional shape from a variety of visual cues, three-dimensional amodal completion may well depend on the perceptual strength of three-dimensionality in the stimulus displays. The first experiments (1A and 1B) tested this hypothesis by means of a habituation paradigm and showed that 4.5-month-old infants are indeed able to amodally complete the back of a self-occluding object when sufficient three-dimensional cues are available. Further support for volume completion in 4.5-month-old infants was found in a second experiment, again using a habituation paradigm, that measured perceived connectedness between two visually separated, self-occluding, three-dimensional objects.
authors.affiliation: Radboud University Nijmegen, Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, The Netherlands. S.Vrins@psych.ru.nl
authors.forename: Sven
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Vrins
authors.forename: Sabine
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Hunnius
authors.forename: Rob
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: van Lier
mesh_terms: D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D002657:Child Development / Q000502:physiology*; D003463:Cues; D005260:Female; D005556:Form Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D006185:Habituation, Psychophysiologic / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D008297:Male; D010466:Perceptual Closure / Q000502:physiology*; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology