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Updated: Jul 13, 2026

A View of Their Own: Capturing the Egocentric View of Infants and Toddlers with Head-Mounted Cameras
03:56

A View of Their Own: Capturing the Egocentric View of Infants and Toddlers with Head-Mounted Cameras

Published on: October 5, 2018

Frame of reference for visual perception in young infants during change of body position

Keisuke Kushiro1, Gentaro Taga, Hama Watanabe

  • 1Graduate School of Human and Environmental Studies, Kyoto University, Yoshida-Nihonmatsucho, Sakyo-ku, Kyoto 606-8501, Japan.

Experimental Brain Research
|August 4, 2007
PubMed

Insights

Infants aged 3-4 months rely more on their egocentric reference frame than the allocentric reference frame when perceiving dynamic visual displays. This suggests infants prioritize retinal coordinates over environmental coordinates when body position changes.

Area of Science:

  • Developmental psychology
  • Neuroscience
  • Visual perception

Background:

  • Infant visual and vestibular systems are functional early in life.
  • Infants may perceive dynamic visual stimuli using either egocentric (retinal) or allocentric (environmental) reference frames.
  • It remains unclear which frame of reference infants prioritize when these conflict due to body position changes.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate whether 3-4 month old infants use egocentric or allocentric reference frames when processing dynamic visual displays with incongruent reference frames.
  • To determine if infants detect novelty based on retinal or environmental coordinates following a change in body position.

Main Methods:

  • Habituation-dishabituation procedure with 20 infants aged 3-4 months.
  • Infants were habituated to a horizontally moving character in the right-side-down position (RSDp).
  • Body position was altered (upright position (UPp) or continued RSDp), followed by presentation of spatially identical or rotated displays to assess visual preference.

Main Results:

  • Infants demonstrated novelty detection based on changes in the retinal coordinate (egocentric frame).
  • They looked longer at displays that changed on the retinal coordinate compared to the environmental coordinate.
  • This indicates a preference for the egocentric reference frame in dynamic visual perception.

Conclusions:

  • Changes in body position create incongruence between egocentric and allocentric frames for infants.
  • Infants aged 3-4 months appear to rely more heavily on the egocentric reference frame for perceiving dynamic visual information.
  • This finding sheds light on early visual processing and spatial orientation development.

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