Abstract
A cast shadow occurs when an object blocks the light from an illumination and projects a dark region onto a surface. Previous studies have reported that adults are slower to identify an object when the object has an incongruent cast shadow than when it has a congruent cast shadow (Castiello, 2001). Here, we used the familiarization-novelty preference procedure to examine whether 5- to 8-month-old infants could detect the relationship between object shapes and cast shadows. In Experiment 1, we examined the infants' ability to detect incongruency between objects and cast shadows. Results showed that 7- to 8-month olds could detect incongruence between the object shapes and the cast shadows, whereas 5- to 6-month olds did not. Yet, our control experiment showed that infants could not detect this incongruence from stimuli in which a white outline had been added to the original cast shadow to decrease the possibility of it being perceived as a cast shadow (Experiment 2). The results of these experiments demonstrate that 7- to 8-month olds responded to the congruence of cast shadows and to consistent contrast polarity between the cast shadow and its background.
Highlights
A cast shadow occurs when an object blocks the light from an illumination and projects a dark region onto a surface
In Castiello’s study, adult participants were asked to identify objects (Castiello, 2001). They found that the vocal reaction times were longer when the lighting, which is indicated by the attached shadows, and the shapes of the cast shadows were incongruent than when both were congruent
We examined whether infants could perceive the constituents of cast shadows
Summary
A cast shadow occurs when an object blocks the light from an illumination and projects a dark region onto a surface. 3.4 Procedure We used the familiarization-novelty preference procedure to test whether infants could detect incongruence between the objects and the cast shadows. These results showed that participants in each age group were familiarized to the congruent figure and that there was no significant difference in the decrease in looking times between sexes.
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