Development of infants' sensitivity for slow and rapid motions

Kaufmann, Franz; Stucki, Markus; Kaufmann-Hayoz, Ruth

doi:10.1016/s0163-6383(85)80019-9

Cited by 54 publications

(40 citation statements)

References 16 publications

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“…As noted earlier, the visual modality is highly responsive to spatial variations, and, as a result, the finding of successful discrimination of changes in the rate of motion was not surprising. In fact, sensitivity to motion appears to be present at birth (Kaufmann, Stucki, & Kaufmann-Hayoz, 1985;Kremenitzer, Vaughan, Kurtzberg, & Dowling, 1979;Volkmann & Dobson, 1976). Moreover, motion appears to be a fundamental property of the visual world, and motion-detection mechanisms are found at many phylogenetic levels where pattem-detection mechanisms are not available at all, or are very rudimentary (Nakayama, 1985).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…According to the modality appropriateness hypothesis, infants' responsiveness to components of auditory/visual compounds should be affected by the degree to which the stimulation in each modality matches the specialization of the respective modalities. On the basis of the fact that infants respond more to moving displays than to spatially static ones (Volkmann & Dobson, 1976;Wilcox & Clayton, 1968) and that they respond differentially to different rates of visual motion early in infancy (Aslin & Shea, 1990;Dannemiller & Freedland, 1991;Freedland & Dannemiller, 1987;Kaufmann, Stucki, & Kaufmann-Hayoz, 1985;Lewkowicz, 1992), it seems reasonable to expect that infants would have little difficulty in detecting changes in the temporal characteristics of a visual component of an auditory/visual compound stimulus when the visual component is spatially dynamic. The .…”

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confidence: 99%

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Infants’ responsiveness to the auditory and visual attributes of a sounding/moving stimulus

Lewkowicz

1992

Perception & Psychophysics

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Responses to unimodal and multimodal attributes of a compound auditory/visual stimulus were investigated in 4-, 6-, 8-, and lO-month-old infants. First, infants were habituated to a compound stimulus consisting of a visual stimulus that moved up and down on a video monitor and a sound that occurred each time the visual stimulus reversed direction at the bottom. Once each infant met a habituation criterion, a series of test trials was administered to assess responsiveness to the components of the compound stimulus. Response was defined as the total duration of visual fixation in each trial. In the two unimodal test trials, the rate at which the component was presented was changed while the rate of the other component remained the same, whereas in the bimodal test trial the rate of both components was changed simultaneously. Results indicated that infants at each age successfully discriminated the bimodal and the two unimodal changes and that regression to the mean did not account for the results. Results also showed that disruption of the temporal relationship that accompanied the change in rate in the two unimodal test trials was also discriminable, but rate changes appeared to playa greater role in responsiveness than did synchrony changes. Considered together with results from similar prior studies, the current results are consistent with the modality appropriateness hypothesis in showing that discrimination of temporal changes in the auditory and visual modalities is dependent on the specialization of the sensory modalities.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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confidence: 99%

Infants’ responsiveness to the auditory and visual attributes of a sounding/moving stimulus

Lewkowicz

1992

Perception & Psychophysics

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“…Aslin and Shea (1990) found a 9-deg/sec threshold at 6 weeks and a 4-deg/sec threshold at 12 weeks for vertical motion. Thresholds for rotary motion were lower, 1.4 and 0.93 deg/sec for 1-and 3-month-olds, respectively; but these thresholds were still elevated in comparison with adult levels (Kaufmann, Stucki, & Kaufmann-Hayoz, 1985), as were thresholds for oscillating gratings (Hamer & Norcia, 1994). Wattam-Bell (1991, 1996a, 1996b has identified changes in motion sensitivity between 6, 8, and 15 weeks of age.…”

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confidence: 92%

Perception of three-dimensional shape specified by optic flow by 8-week-old infants

Arterberry

Yonas

2000

Perception & Psychophysics

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Sensitivity of 8-week-old infants to optical flow specifying the shape of a three-dimensional object was assessed. Infants viewed kinetic random-dot displays that specified three-dimensional cubes. The cubes were identical except for the presence or absence of an interior comer. Half of the infants viewed the full display. The other half viewed the central region of the displays, where the flow specifying the presence or absence of the comer differed. Infants in the full-view condition looked significantly longer to a novel cube than to the familiar cube following habituation. In contrast, infants in the partial-view condition looked equally to the novel and familiar cubes, ruling out the possibility that infants who viewed the full displays merely discriminated differences in motion in the central region of the two displays. These findings suggest that infants as young as 8 weeks perceive three-dimensional object shape from optic flow.Perception of the world based on motion has occupied perceptual psychologists for a number of decades (see Braunstein, 1962, for a review). Pioneering work by Helmholtz (1909Helmholtz ( /1924 suggested that the differential motion ofobjects located at different distances was an effective cue to depth, and informal experiments conducted by Mach (1886/1959) may have been the first in which perception of structure from motion was explored. Wallach and O'Connell (1953) performed the first formal experiments on the perception of three-dimensional shape from motion, which they called the kinetic depth effect. In their work, they found that a static shadow of an object projected onto a screen was perceived as a flat twodimensional design. However, when the object rotated, the deforming contours were perceived accurately as a three-dimensional object. Gibson (1950Gibson ( , 1966 placed perception based on motion-carried information at the center of his new theory and highlighted its importance for veridical perception. Motion-carried information is viewed widely as an effective source of information for spatial layout. Moreover, those studying the development ofperceptual processes have found that early in life, humans are responsive to motion-carried information. In the present study, we investigated 8-week-old infants' ability to

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“…The stimuli were moving because it is a well established fact that infants prefer moving displays to static ones (e.g. Kaufmann et al, 1985), i.e. because motion attracts the infants' attention, and apparently exerts a facilitating effect on the infants' performance in visual habituationdishabituation tasks (e.g.…”

Section: Stimulimentioning

confidence: 99%

Infants' perception of directional alignment of texture elements on a spherical surface

Kavšek

2003

Infant and Child Development

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By appropriately compressing texture elements on a circular surface, one can evoke the impression of being confronted with the depiction of a spherical object in the picture plane. According to Todd and Akerstrom (1987), the 3D perception of such an object can be eliminated if the optical elements are not sufficiently elongated or if they are not aligned with one another. In the current investigation, 4-month-old infants were tested for their ability to react to a disruption of the directional alignment variable. They were habituated to either a spherical surface or a surface the spatial layout of which was destroyed by reorienting the texture elements, and were afterwards tested with a further ellipsoid object and with a further flat surface. Data analysis revealed that the female infants, but not the male participants, preferred the novel posthabituation display, that is, the test stimulus which included a change in the orientational alignment of texture elements. These findings are discussed within the context of development of sensitivity to pictorial depth cues. It is possible that infants as young as 4 months of age respond to manipulations of the directional alignment factor per se, while older infants are capable of using this factor as a cue for 3D object shape. Copyright # 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.Key words: infant vision; perceptual development; pictorial depth cues; gradients of texture Gibson (1950) was the first to recognize the importance of texture gradients for the perception of spatial layout. Research has revealed four types of variation among texture elements that are potentially informative. These variations are: gradients of density, gradients of size, gradients of convergence (linear perspective) and gradients of compression (width/length). Texture gradients are potentially informative for determining both the distance of a planar surface from the point of observation and the orientation of a planar surface to the line of sight (e.g. Knill, 1998a, b). Stevens (1981Stevens ( , 1984 points to two geometrical

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Development of infants' sensitivity for slow and rapid motions

Cited by 54 publications

References 16 publications

Infants’ responsiveness to the auditory and visual attributes of a sounding/moving stimulus

Infants’ responsiveness to the auditory and visual attributes of a sounding/moving stimulus

Perception of three-dimensional shape specified by optic flow by 8-week-old infants

Infants' perception of directional alignment of texture elements on a spherical surface

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