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Published on: February 8, 2019
Where Infants Look Determines How They See: Eye Movements and Object Perception Performance in 3-Month-Olds
Scott P Johnson1, Jonathan A Slemmer2, Dima Amso1
1Department of Psychology New York University.
Insights
Infants’ perception of hidden objects develops by focusing on visual cues. Three-month-olds who perceived object unity scanned visible parts more, suggesting early visual information pickup is key.
Area of Science:
- Developmental psychology
- Cognitive science
- Infant perception
Background:
- Understanding how infants perceive unified objects despite occlusion is crucial for perceptual development.
- Previous research highlights the developmental timeline and visual cues supporting object unity in infants.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the specific visual inputs infants use to perceive object unity across a spatial gap.
- To examine the role of eye movements in the development of object unity perception.
Main Methods:
- Recorded eye movements of 3-month-old infants during a standard object unity task.
- Analyzed scanning patterns in relation to post-habituation preferences indicating unity perception versus non-perception.
Main Results:
- Infants perceiving object unity exhibited distinct eye-tracking patterns compared to non-perceivers.
- Perceivers scanned visible parts of the object more reliably and explored the object's motion range more frequently.
Conclusions:
- Emerging object concepts in infants are closely linked to the visual information available in their environment.
- The process of information pickup through visual exploration is fundamental to developing object unity perception.
Abstract:
A fundamental question of perceptual development concerns how infants come to perceive partly hidden objects as unified across a spatial gap imposed by an occluder. Much is known about the time course of development of perceptual completion during the first several months after birth, as well as some of the visual information that supports unity perception in infants. The goal of this investigation was to examine the inputs to this process. We recorded eye movements in 3-month-old infants as they participated in a standard object unity task and found systematic differences in scanning patterns between those infants whose post-habituation preferences were indicative of unity perception versus those infants who did not perceive unity. Perceivers, relative to nonperceivers, scanned more reliably in the vicinity of the visible rod parts and scanned more frequently across the range of rod motion. These results suggest that emerging object concepts are tied closely to available visual information in the environment, and the process of information pickup.
