Four-Month-Old Infants' Sensitivity to Binocular and Kinetic Information for Three-Dimensional-Object Shape

• Published in: Child development 1987-08, Vol.58 (4), p.910-917
• Main Authors: Yonas, Albert, Arterberry, Martha E., Granrud, Carl E.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Attention; Biological and medical sciences; Child Development; Cues; Depth Perception; Developmental psychology; Discrimination Learning; Dominance, Cerebral; Experimentation; Female; Form Perception; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Habituation; Habituation, Psychophysiologic; Humans; Infant; Infants; Kinetics; Lamps; Legal objections; Male; Motion Perception; Neonatal screening; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychology. Psychophysiology; Shape perception; Tetrahedrons; Transfer (Psychology); Vision disparity
• ISSN: 0009-3920; 1467-8624
• DOI: 10.2307/1130531

4-month-old infants were tested for sensitivity to kinetic and binocular information for 3-dimensional-object shape. The study included 2 tests: a test for sensitivity to binocular disparity and a shape perception test. The disparity sensitivity test used a preferential looking procedure developed by Held, Birch, and Gwiazda. On the basis of the results of this test, infants were assigned to disparity-sensitive and disparity-insensitive groups. In the shape perception test, a "transfer-across-depth-cues" method was employed. Infants were habituated to a rotating object whose shape was specified by kinetic information and were then presented with stationary stereograms specifying the same object and a novel-shaped object. The disparity-sensitive infants looked significantly longer at the novel object than at the familiar object, whereas the disparity-insensitive infants showed no difference in looking time to the novel and the familiar objects. The results indicate that disparity-sensitive 4-month-old infants can perceive 3-dimensional-object shape from kinetic and binocular depth information.