Abstract
Two experiments examined the relationship between emerging sitting ability and sensitivity to symmetry as a cue to figure-ground (FG) assignment in 6.5-month-old infants (N = 80). In each experiment, infants who could sit unassisted (as indicated by parental report in Experiment 1 and by an in-lab assessment in Experiment 2) exhibited sensitivity to symmetry as a cue to FG assignment, whereas non-sitting infants did not. Experiment 2 further revealed that sensitivity to this cue is not related to general cognitive abilities as indexed using a non-related visual habituation task. Results demonstrate an important relationship between motor development and visual perception and further suggest that the achievement of important motor milestones such as stable sitting may be related to qualitative changes in sensitivity to monocular depth assignment cues such as symmetry.
Highlights
Since the 1960s, we have made considerable advances in our understanding of perceptual development
An experimenter verbally asked parents “Can your infant sit unsupported.”. This is a coarse measurement of sitting, any differences we observe between these two groups of infants provides a first insight into whether sitting ability is related to FG segregation (Note: Experiment 2 included an in-lab assessment of sitting to validate parental report)
When comparing within each sitting group, we found that sitters showed significantly greater consistency preference scores for matched motion trials than non-matched motion trials, t(17) = −2.86, p = 0.01, d = −1.39, whereas the difference between matched and non-matched motion trials for non-sitters was not significant, t(17) = 1.98, p = 0.06, d = 0.96 1. These results show that infants whose parents reported that they could sit unsupported can use symmetry as a cue to FG segregation
Summary
Since the 1960s, we have made considerable advances in our understanding of perceptual development. Research has documented the timing of developmental milestones in infants’ perception of color (Dannemiller and Hanko, 1987; Mercer et al, 2014) and depth (Yonas et al, 2002; Hirshkowitz and Wilcox, 2013; Adolph et al, 2014), their ability to segregate objects and detect object boundaries (Cohen and Cashon, 2001; Needham, 2001; Hayden et al, 2011), discriminate between symmetrical and asymmetrical figures (Fisher et al, 1981) as well as factors that influence perceptual and information processing (e.g., Banks and Ginsburg, 1985). The goal of the present investigation is to extend this literature by examining the relation between independent sitting and figure-ground (FG) segregation in 6.5-month-old infants.
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