Since birth, infants develop the ability to perceive a wide range of intersensory relations among various kinds of amodal temporal information. This study addresses the development of the ability to perceive duration-based intersensory relations. Three groups of infants, four, seven and 10 months old, participated in two trials of an intersensory…

Over their 1st year of life, infants' "universal" perception of the sounds of language narrows to encompass only those contrasts made in their native language (J. F. Werker & R. C. Tees, 1984). This research tested 40 infants in an eyetracking paradigm and showed that this pattern also holds for infants exposed to seen language--American Sign…

Can infants use interposition and line junction cues to infer three-dimensional (3D) structure? Previous work has shown that in a task that required 4-month-olds to discriminate between static two-dimensional (2D) pictures of possible and impossible cubes, infants exhibited a spontaneous preference for displays of the impossible cube but left open…

Tests the hypothesis that age-related shifts in infants' visual preferences for stimuli (varying in complexity as defined by number of light-dark intersections) are due to changing attention value both within and between the inversely varying dimensions of size and number. (Author/ED)

The relationship between visual stimulus intensity and directional finger movements was examined in infants of two age groups (16 infants, 10 to 15 weeks old, and 8 infants, 20 to 25 weeks old). Two hypotheses derived from Schneirla's Approach-Withdrawal Theory were examined: (1) that responses of the younger, but not of the older infants, would…

Used a habituation-dishabituation procedure to test ability of 4-, 5-, and 7-month-olds to differentiate between a subjective ellipse and a nonsubjective pattern that were constructed by displacing the inducing elements of the illusory figure. Found that even 4-month-olds discriminated between the subjective ellipse and nonillusory display. This…

Results showed that 2- and 3-dimensional forms affected 4- and 8-week-old infant visual behavior differently. (Author/JMB)

Three experiments examined infants' processing of three-dimensional (3D) information in static images. Results indicated that 3-month olds are sensitive to 3D cues in static images. However, discrepancies based on these cues may not engage infants' attention like those based on fundamental features. (Author)

Two experiments examined whether infants are sensitive to holistic combinations of line junctions in 2-D images that adults use to derive overall 3-D structure. Results suggested that 3-month-olds are sensitive to holistic combinations of line junctions that adults use to derive 3-D information but also selectively attend to these 3-D cues in…

Human neonates selectively fixated patterns with curved rather than straight contours when the outermost contours differed in this form variable and when quantitative variables were controlled. Data indicated the presence from birth of a discrimination ability basic to later form perception. (Author/ED)

Forty-eight neonates were randomly assigned to view a moving stimulus either in the horizontal or the upright position, with or without added vestibular stimulation and with or without pacifier sucking. Results indicate that vestibular proprioceptive stimulation, provided horizontally or semi-vertically, significantly enhanced visual tracking.…

Visual pattern preferences were established for 96 9- and 13-week-old infants using stimuli varying in contour density presented either at a low, moderate, or high luminance level. Age differences in the maximally preferred patterns across stimuli and luminance levels indicated that luminance interacts with contour density in determining stimulus…