Elsevier

Infant Behavior and Development

Volume 13, Issue 1, January–March 1990, Pages 33-49
Infant Behavior and Development

Newborn and older infants' perception of partly occluded objects

https://doi.org/10.1016/0163-6383(90)90004-RGet rights and content

Abstract

In experiments described by Kellman and Spelke (1983) and Kellman, Spelke, and Short (1986), 4-month-old infants were habituated to a stimulus (usually a rod) which moved behind a central occluder, so that only the top and bottom of the rod was visible. Subsequently, the infants increased responding to a stimulus consisting of two object pieces with a gap where the occluding block had been but did not respond to a continuous rod, suggesting that during the habituation trials, they had been perceiving a connected object, that is, they were “filling in” the unseen portion. The present article describes five experiments which were designed to see if perception of object unity is present at birth. In Experiments 1, 2, and 5, moving, occluded displays were shown to newborn infants. In Experiment 1, the familiarized stimulus was an outline square which underwent translatory motion behind a stationary occluder, and in Experiments 2 and 5, the familiarized stimulus was a rod which moved back and forth behind a stationary occluder. In all three experiments, the newborns subsequently gave a strong preference for a continuous, rather than a broken, stimulus. Experiments 3 and 4 showed, respectively, that newborns perceive both moving and stationary parts of a moving, occluded display, and that the preferences found in Experiments 1, 2, and 5 are best interpreted as novelty, rather than familiarity, preferences. In striking contrast to the above, in Experiment 5, 4-month-old infants, tested under the same conditions as the newborn infants, gave a strong novelty preference for two object pieces rather than a continuous stimulus, a finding which replicates the results of Kellman et al. (1986). These findings argue against the view that infants begin life with a knowledge of the unity and coherence of objects and suggest that infants' understanding of objects changes in the early months of life. Unlike 4-month-olds, newborns appear to perceive only that which is immediately visible, and they seem to be unable to make perceptual inferences from visual input.

References (17)

There are more references available in the full text version of this article.

Cited by (140)

  • Object Concept

    2020, Encyclopedia of Infant and Early Childhood Development
  • Perceptual completion of partly occluded contours during childhood

    2018, Journal of Experimental Child Psychology
  • The return of concept empiricism

    2017, Handbook of Categorization in Cognitive Science
  • The origins of belief representation: Monkeys fail to automatically represent others' beliefs

    2014, Cognition
    Citation Excerpt :

    Some researchers have proposed that there is a core system for representing inanimate physical objects and their movements (e.g., Spelke, Breinlinger, Macomber, & Jacobson, 1992). In line with this view, there is a rich body of evidence that infants possess a set of principles for reasoning about physical objects within the first few months of life, for instance, that objects maintain consistent paths in time and space and tend to cohere (e.g., Aguiar & Baillargeon, 1999; Baillargeon, Spelke, & Wasserman, 1985; Kellman & Spelke, 1983; Kellman, Spelke, & Short, 1986; Leslie & Keeble, 1987; Slater et al., 1990; Spelke, 1990; Spelke, Kestenbaum, Simons, & Wein, 2011; Valenza, Leo, Gava, & Simion, 2006; von Hofsten & Spelke, 1985). Importantly, such principles also implicitly guide adult object processing.

  • Development of the Visual System

    2013, Neural Circuit Development and Function in the Healthy and Diseased Brain: Comprehensive Developmental Neuroscience
  • Development of the Visual System

    2013, Neural Circuit Development and Function in the Heathy and Diseased Brain
View all citing articles on Scopus

This research was supported by grant C00232278/2466 from the Economic and Social Research Council to the first author. We are indebted to the staff of the Maternity Ward, Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital, Heavitree, Exeter, England, and to the subjects' mothers for their cooperation. We thank the editor and two anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments on on earlier version of the article.

View full text