TY - JOUR
T1 - Object segregation in 8-month-old infants
AU - Needham, Amy
AU - Baillargeon, Renée
N1 - Funding Information:
This research was supported by grants from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development to the first (FIRST grant HD-32129) and the second (grants HD-28686 and HD-21104) author. We wish to thank Cindy Fisher and Lisa Kaufman, for helpful comments and suggestions; Stanley Wasserman and Kevin Miller, for their patient and gracious statistical advice on the survival analyses; James Hershey, for carrying out these analyses; and Elizabeth Cullum, for conducting the other data analyses. We also thank Susan Garland-Bengur, Jason Botwick, Lincoln Craton, Julie DeVos, Myra Gillespie, Valerie Kolstad, Laura Kotovsky, and the undergraduate students working in the Infant Perception Laboratory at Duke University and in the Infant Cognition Laboratory at the University of Illinois, for their help with the data collection. Finally, we thank the parents who kindly agreed to have their infants participate in the experiments.
PY - 1997/2/1
Y1 - 1997/2/1
N2 - Two experiments examined 8-month-old infants' use of configural and physical knowledge in segregating three-dimensional adjacent displays. The infants in Experiment 1 saw two identical yellow octagons standing side by side; in the test events, a hand grasped the right octagon and pulled it to the side. The infants looked reliably longer when the octagons moved apart than when they moved together, suggesting that the infants (a) perceived the octagons as a single unit and hence (b) expected them to move together and were surprised when they did not. The infants in Experiment 2 saw a yellow cylinder and a blue box; a hand grasped the cylinder and pulled it to the side. The infants looked reliably longer when the box moved with the cylinder than when the box remained in place, suggesting that they (a) viewed the cylinder and box as distinct units and thus (b) expected the cylinder to move alone and were surprised when it did not. These results indicate that, by 8 months of age, infants use configural knowledge when organizing adjacent displays: they expect similar parts to belong to the same unit and dissimilar parts to belong to distinct units. Additional results revealed that 8-month-old infants' interpretation of displays is affected not only by configural but also by physical considerations. Thus, infants in Experiment 1 who saw a thin blade lowered between the octagons viewed them as two rather than as one unit. Similarly, infants in Experiment 2 who saw the cylinder lying above instead of on the apparatus floor perceived the cylinder and box as one rather than two units. These results indicate that 8-month-old infants bring to bear their knowledge of impenetrability and support when parsing adjacent displays. Furthermore, when faced with two conflicting interpretations of a display, one suggested by their configural and one by their physical knowledge, infants allow the latter to supersede the former. Together, these findings suggest that, by 8 months of age, infants' approach to segregation is fundamentally similar to that of adults.
AB - Two experiments examined 8-month-old infants' use of configural and physical knowledge in segregating three-dimensional adjacent displays. The infants in Experiment 1 saw two identical yellow octagons standing side by side; in the test events, a hand grasped the right octagon and pulled it to the side. The infants looked reliably longer when the octagons moved apart than when they moved together, suggesting that the infants (a) perceived the octagons as a single unit and hence (b) expected them to move together and were surprised when they did not. The infants in Experiment 2 saw a yellow cylinder and a blue box; a hand grasped the cylinder and pulled it to the side. The infants looked reliably longer when the box moved with the cylinder than when the box remained in place, suggesting that they (a) viewed the cylinder and box as distinct units and thus (b) expected the cylinder to move alone and were surprised when it did not. These results indicate that, by 8 months of age, infants use configural knowledge when organizing adjacent displays: they expect similar parts to belong to the same unit and dissimilar parts to belong to distinct units. Additional results revealed that 8-month-old infants' interpretation of displays is affected not only by configural but also by physical considerations. Thus, infants in Experiment 1 who saw a thin blade lowered between the octagons viewed them as two rather than as one unit. Similarly, infants in Experiment 2 who saw the cylinder lying above instead of on the apparatus floor perceived the cylinder and box as one rather than two units. These results indicate that 8-month-old infants bring to bear their knowledge of impenetrability and support when parsing adjacent displays. Furthermore, when faced with two conflicting interpretations of a display, one suggested by their configural and one by their physical knowledge, infants allow the latter to supersede the former. Together, these findings suggest that, by 8 months of age, infants' approach to segregation is fundamentally similar to that of adults.
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U2 - 10.1016/S0010-0277(96)00727-5
DO - 10.1016/S0010-0277(96)00727-5
M3 - Article
C2 - 9141904
AN - SCOPUS:0031064756
SN - 0010-0277
VL - 62
SP - 121
EP - 149
JO - Cognition
JF - Cognition
IS - 2
ER -