Evidence for perceptual organization in infants: Perception of subjective contours by young infants

Abstract

In a series of experiments with 3- and 4-month-old infants, a familiarization/novelty preference procedure assessed the ability to perceive subjective contours. A pattern whose arrangement of elements induces the subjective contours that are perceived as a square by adult observers was used. By varying the orientation of elements, similar patterns without subjective contours were produced. With one exception, infants discriminated a pattern with subjective contours from patterns without subjective contours, but they did not discriminate among different patterns without subjective contours (Experiment 1). After being familiarized with real contours that formed a square (Experiment 2) and with three different patterns that produced the subjective contours of a square (Experiment 3), infants preferred patterns without subjective contours to a pattern that produced the subjective contours of a square. These three experiments together strongly suggest that infants as young as 3 months of age are able to perceive subjective contours. In Experiment 4 and its replication, infants perceived a pattern producing a subjective square or diamond as a set of components forming a square or diamond, namely, the lines and angles, and quite possibly as the complete form as well. Moreover, the percept of the subjective pattern may be used as the basis for discrimination among forms with real contours, indicative of a functional equivalence between subjective and real contours.