Eleven-month-old infants infer differences in the hardness of object surfaces from observation of penetration events.
Previous studies have shown different developmental trajectories for object recognition of solid and non-solid objects. However, there is no evidence as to whether infants have expectations regarding certain attributes of objects, such as surface hardness, in the absence of tactile information. In the present study, we examined infants' perception of the hardness of object surfaces from visually presented penetration events using the familiarization-novelty preference procedure. Experiment 1 showed that by 11 months old infants distinguished a relatively soft surface from a crusty surface based on changes in the velocity of a moving object as the moving object penetrated the surface of the target object. Experiment 2 ruled out the possibility that infants were merely sensitive to differences in the velocity changes in the stimuli.
Department of Information Systems, Faculty of Information Culture, Niigata University of International and Information Studies , Niigata, Japan.
Tomoko
T
Imura
Faculty of Human Sciences, Bunkyo University , Koshigaya, Japan ; National Food Research Institute, National Agriculture and Food Research Organization , Tsukuba, Japan.
Tomohiro
T
Masuda
Department of Psychology, Niigata University , Niigata, Japan.
Nobu
N
Shirai
National Food Research Institute, National Agriculture and Food Research Organization , Tsukuba, Japan.
Yuji
Y
Wada
infant vision; material perception; motion perception; object manipulation; perceived hardness of solid objects