Perceptual Completion in Newborn Human Infants

Abstract

Despite decades of studies of human infants, a still open question concerns the role of visual experience in the development of the ability to perceive complete shapes over partial occlusion. Previous studies show that newborns fail to manifest this ability, either because they lack the visual experience required for perceptual completion or because they fail to detect the pattern of motion. To distinguish these possibilities, newborns' perception of a center-occluded object was tested, using stroboscopic motion. Infants (mean age of 72 hr) perceived the object as a connected unit, providing the first evidence that the newborn is capable of filling in gaps in the visible surface layout when the relevant visual information can be detected by his or her immature visual system.

Core knowledge of object, number, and geometry: A comparative and neural approach

“…One could argue that perhaps chicks are equipped from the start with the mechanisms for completing partly occluded objects, whereas humans would learn about it in a period of about 4 months, taking advantage of experience with occluding events in the world. Recently, however, it has been shown that when stroboscopic motion is used instead of continuous motion (the former being processed early in development by subcortical structures), neonates of only a few hours of life show evidence of amodal completion similarly to chicks (Valenza & Herman, 2011;Valenza, Leo, Gava, & Simion, 2006). Thus, maturation of certain other areas of the brain seems to be necessary in altricial species in order to exhibit in behaviour mental competencies that are actually already available from the startthat is, competencies that are predisposed in the brain at birth.…”

Spontaneous object and movement representations in 4-month-old human infants and albino Swiss mice

“…There is considerable evidence that during the first months of life human infants perceive objects as bound physical entities that move as wholes on continuous paths and continue to exist even when they disappear from sight (Aguiar & Baillargeon, 1999;Leslie & Keeble, 1987;Spelke, 1990). Adherence to some of these principles is observed also in newborn human infants (Valenza, Leo, Gava, & Simion, 2006), primates (Call, 2000;Hall-Haro, Johnson, Price, Vance, & Kiorpes, 2008;Natale, Antinucci, Spinozzi, & Poti, 1986;Santos, 2004) and chicks (Regolin & Vallortigara, 1995). In human infants the notion of objects does therefore not appear to require visual, physical or even human specific experience with actual objects to emerge (Baillargeon, 2002;Spelke, Breinlinger, Macomber, & Jacobson, 1992).…”

Perception of Mooney faces by young infants: The role of local feature visibility, contrast polarity, and motion

“…Apparent motion displays-displays in which two or more static images presented in rapid succession give the impression of movementhave been used in previous newborn and infant studies investigating the contribution of motion processing to the perception of illusory contours (Kavšek & Yonas, 2006;Valenza & Bulf, 2007), perception of partly occluded objects (Valenza, Leo, Gava, & Simion, 2006), and face recognition (Bulf & Turati, 2010). All of these studies indicate that stimulus motion facilitates infants' perception and recognition of faces and objects (for a review, see Otsuka et al, 2009).…”