Organisation perceptive chez les bébés de 4 mois : la détection de permutations

Abstract

Perceptual organization in infants has been investigated during the seventies but during last years, interest in this domain has declined noticeably. The current research places a greater emphasis on infants' cognitive activities. However infants' perceptual organization is far from being well understood, and data obtained in our laboratory suggest that perceptual and cognitive processes are interdependent. For example, depending on the organization of the presented figures, infants can or cannot categorize on cogni- tively equivalent stimuli. It seems interesting then to test the role of symmetry on a discrimination task in 4-month-old infants. A habituation/novelty reaction paradigm with an infant control procedure was used. The subjects were habituated to a vertical or horizontal figure. This figure consisted of a row of three circles and a row of three crosses situated on either sides of the central axis (horizontal or vertical). In the test phase, the figure was modified either completely (all the circles and crosses were permutated) or partially (one circle and one cross were permutated). The results show that 4-month old infants exhibit a novelty reaction for the partial (i.e. non-symmetric) permutation but not for the complete (i.e. symmetric) permutation, regardless of the global organisation.