Adults recognize emotions conveyed by bodies with comparable accuracy to facial emotions. However, no prior study has explored infants' perception of body emotions. In Experiment 1, 6.5-month-olds (n = 32) preferred happy over neutral actions of actors with covered faces in upright but not inverted silent videos. In Experiment 2, infants…

Event-related potentials (ERPs) were utilized in an investigation of 21 six-month-olds' attention to and processing of global and local properties of hierarchical patterns. Overall, infants demonstrated an advantage for processing the overall configuration (i.e., global properties) of local features of hierarchical patterns; however,…

Six-month-olds reliably discriminate different monkey and human faces whereas 9-month-olds only discriminate different human faces. It is often falsely assumed that perceptual narrowing reflects a permanent change in perceptual abilities. In 3 experiments, ninety-six 12-month-olds' discrimination of unfamiliar monkey faces was examined. Following…

To examine the ontogeny of emotional face processing, event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded from adults and 7-month-old infants while viewing pictures of fearful, happy, and neutral faces. Face-sensitive ERPs at occipital-temporal scalp regions differentiated between fearful and neutral/happy faces in both adults (N170 was larger for fear)…

One- to four-month-old infants' abilities to see various structural characteristics of a subjective contour figure were assessed by means of a habituation procedure. (Author/DB)

Previous research suggests that model competence does not emerge until relatively late in infancy (20-26 months). Development was systematically analyzed within 3 key areas--count noun learning, dual representation, and categorization--hypothesized to support the emergence of model competence in the second year. In an object-handling preferential…

The perceived spatiotemporal continuity of objects depends on the way they appear and disappear as they move in the spatial layout. This study investigated whether infants' predictive tracking of a briefly occluded object is sensitive to the manner by which the object disappears and reappears. Five-, 7-, and 9-month-old infants were shown a ball…

Infants five- and seven-months-old were sequentially shown three stimulus arrays of visual elements, only one of which was capable of producing subjective contours. An infant habituation control procedure was used to test infants' abilities to discriminate the arrays. (Author/RH)

Several propositions deduced from the discrepancy hypothesis were tested with four-month-old infants using random shapes in a habituation/discrepancy paradigm. (JMB)

Two studies found infants' scores on the Range of State Cluster of the Neonatal Behavioral Assessment Scale with Kansas Supplements to correlate significantly with visual discrimination performance at three months of age. The correlation with behavioral state organization contradicted the prediction that orientation scores would predict visual…

Three experiments using the familiarization-novelty preference procedure confirmed the hypothesis that three-month-old infants could form categorical representations of spatial relations above and below. The infants, after being shown a familiarization diagram with a dot appearing in multiple locations below a line, showed a preference for a novel…

This study investigated 17-week-old infants' response to discrepancy in visual patterns as a function of rate of habituation. (BRT)

Investigates whether tactual habituation without the assistance of vision occurs in four- to six-month-old infants. Additionally tests the relevance of a habituation/reaction to novelty procedure in the tactual modality. Results show clearly that tactual habituation occurs in such infants, just as visual habituation does. (Author/RH)

One- and two-month-old infants were shown schematic drawings of a human face with features arranged (1) naturally, (2) symmetrically but scrambled, and (3) asymmetrically and scrambled. Two-month-olds discriminated among all arangements and preferred the natural arrangement; one-month-olds showed no discrimination or preference. (Author/DB)