The detection of slow stimulus movement in 2- to 5-month-olds

Action and perception in infancy

“…That is, newborn infants are sensitive to velocity when it concerns the information-based control of head movements. In contrast, studies assessing infant perception, which commonly use habituation or preference looking methods, found no sign that infants younger than 2 months of age perceive velocity (e.g., Dannemiller & Freedland, 1989Wattam-Bell, 1990). This discrepancy between action and perception in the use of velocity information suggests that vision for action and vision for perception develop independently.…”

Exploring the use of a mobile robot as an imitation agent with children with low-functioning autism

“…In the case of an autonomous change (excluding cyclic movements such as those associated with a bouncing ball), Premack suggests that infants perceive intentionality and show preference toward these objects. While adults can identify the nature of a self-propelled object and associate intentionality to it, for infants what matters is not the object but the type of movements it generates (Sekuler 1975) and its velocity (Aslin and Shea 1990;Dannemiller and Freeland 1989). A child is also able to attribute self-propelled capabilities once having seen the robot intentionally moving, and this association will continue even when the robot has stopped (Premack 1990).…”

Cerebral Visual Impairment in Children

“…Children can pursue moving visual stimuli already by the age of 4 weeks, provided that the stimulus speed does not exceed 20°/s. At the age of 4 months children can reliably differentiate between stimulus movement and self-movement (Dannemiller and Friedland 1989 ). Interestingly children at this age can detect moving (and fl ickering) stimuli more reliably than stationary ones, and show more reliable orienting responses to moving stimuli (Wattam-Bell 1992, 1996a.…”