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Updated: Jul 10, 2026

Creating Objects and Object Categories for Studying Perception and Perceptual Learning
Published on: November 2, 2012
Object recognition and object segregation in infancy: historical perspective, theoretical significance, "kinds" of
1Department of Psychology, Washington & Jefferson College, PA 15301, USA. pquinn@washjeff.edu
Abstract:
Needham (2001, this issue) reports that 4.5-month-old infants can use a short-term familiarization experience with a single object to facilitate the segregation of a visual display consisting of a configurally similar object and a configurally dissimilar adjacent object. We reflect on this finding in the larger context of Needham's systematic research on the development of object perception, a program that has included (1) a series of empirical studies designed to identify the different cues that infants use for object segregation and (2) a theoretical framework in which infants are presumed to integrate these cues to form interpretations of complex visual displays.
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