Perception of three-dimensional form by human infants

Human adults can perceive the three-dimensional form of an object from single views or from the continuously transforming two-dimensional projections of an object rotating in depth. The present work reports that 16-week-old infants can perceive three-dimensional form from transforming optical projections, but not from single or multiple static views of an object. In a habituation-of-looking-time procedure, infants in a kinetic condition were shown videotapes of one of two three-dimensional objects continuously rotating, on alternate trials, around two different axes of rotation in depth. Infants in two other conditions saw successive static views taken from the same rotation sequences. After habituation, perception of three-dimensional form was tested by presenting the same three-dimensional form moving around a new axis of rotation in depth and a different three-dimensional form moving around the same, new axis. Infants shown continuously transforming displays generalized habituation to the same object and dishabituated dramatically to the new object, whereas infants in the two static conditions showed no differential responding to the test objects as a function of habituation object. Kinetic information seems to be primary in the development of three-dimensional form perception.

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