ERIC Number: EJ765033
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2007-Aug
Pages: 20
Abstractor: Author
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0010-0277
EISSN: N/A
Infants Perceive Human Point-Light Displays as Solid Forms
Moore, Derek G.; Goodwin, Julia E.; George, Rachel; Axelsson, Emma L.; Braddick, Fleur M. B.
Cognition, v104 n2 p377-396 Aug 2007
While five-month-old infants show orientation-specific sensitivity to changes in the motion and occlusion patterns of human point-light displays, it is not known whether infants are capable of binding a human representation to these displays. Furthermore, it has been suggested that infants do not encode the same physical properties for humans and material objects. To explore these issues we tested whether infants would selectively apply the principle of solidity to upright human displays. In the first experiment infants aged six and nine months were repeatedly shown a human point-light display walking across a computer screen up to 10 times or until habituated. Next, they were repeatedly shown the walking display passing behind an in-depth representation of a table, and finally they were shown the human display appearing to pass through the table top in violation of the solidity of the hidden human form. Both six- and nine-month-old infants showed significantly greater recovery of attention to this final phase. This suggests that infants are able to bind a solid vertical form to human motion. In two further control experiments we presented displays that contained similar patterns of motion but were not perceived by adults as human. Six- and nine-month-old infants did not show recovery of attention when a scrambled display or an inverted human display passed through the table. Thus, the binding of a solid human form to a display in only seems to occur for upright human motion. The paper considers the implications of these findings in relation to theories of infants' developing conceptions of objects, humans and animals.
Descriptors: Motion, Physical Activities, Infants, Cognitive Processes, Classification, Human Body, Computer Assisted Testing, Associative Learning
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: Early Childhood Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A