We investigated whether adults and infants aged 3, 5, and 9 months perceive the unity and boundaries of visible objects in accord with the Gestalt relations of color and texture similarity, good continuation, or good form. Adults and infants were presented with simple but unfamiliar displays in which all three Gestalt relations specified either one object or two objects—perception of the objects was assessed by a verbal rating method in the adults and by a preferential looking method in the infants. The Gestalt relations appeared to influence the adults' perceptions strongly. However, the relations appeared to have no effect on the perceptions of 3-month-old infants and weak effects on the perceptions of 5-month-old and 9-month-old infants. The findings support the suggestion that developmental changes in object perception occur slowly. These changes, and the organizational phenomena to which Gestalt psychology called attention, may depend in part on the child's developing ability to recognize objects of particular kinds.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
BaillargeonR, 1993“The object concept revisited: New directions in the investigation of infants' physical knowledge”, in Visual Perception and Cognition in Infancy Ed. GranrudC R (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum)
2.
BertenthalB ICamposJ JHaithM M, 1980“Development of visual organization: The perception of subjective contours”Child Development511072–1080
3.
BertenthalB IProffittD RKramerS J, 1987“Perception of biomechanical motions by infants: Implementation of various processing constraints”Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance13577–585
4.
BiedermanI, 1987“Recognition by components: A theory of human image understanding”Psychological Review94115–117
5.
BornsteinMFerdinandsenKGrossC G, 1981“Perception of symmetry in infancy”Developmental Psychology1782–86
6.
BrunswikEKamiyaJ, 1953“Ecological cue-validity of “proximity” and of other gestalt factors”American Journal of Psychology6620–32
7.
CareySKlattLSchlafferM, 1992“Infants' representations of objects and nonsolid substances”, unpublished manuscript, MIT (available from: S Carey, MIT, Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, E10–016, Cambridge, MA 02139)
8.
CohenL BYoungerB A, 1983“Perceptual categorization in the infant”, in New Trends in Conceptual Representation Ed. ScholnickE (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum)
9.
DarlingtonR, 1990Regression and Linear Models (New York: McGraw-Hill)
10.
GranrudC EHaakeR JYonasA, 1985“Infants' sensitivity to familiar size: The effect of memory on spatial perception”Perception & Psychophysics37459–466
11.
HatfieldGEpsteinW, 1985“The status of the minimum principle in the theoretical analysis of visual perception”Psychological Bulletin97155–186
12.
HeldRBirchE EGwiazdaJ, 1980“Stereoacuity of human infants”Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (USA)775572–5574
13.
von HelmholtzH, 1909/1962Handbook of Physiological Opticsvolume 3 (New York: Dover, 1962); English translation by SouthallJ P C for the Optical Society of America (1924) from the 3rd German edition of Handbuch der Physiologischen Optik (Hamburg: Voss, 1909)
14.
HerrnsteinR J, 1984“Objects, categories, and discriminative stimuli”, in Animal Cognition Eds RoitblatH LBeverT GTerraceH S (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum) pp 233–261
15.
HochbergJMcAlisterE, 1953“A quantitative approach to figural ‘goodness’”Journal of Experimental Psychology46361–364
16.
HoffmanD DRichardsW A, 1984“Parts of recognition”Cognition1865–96
17.
von HofstenC, 1991“Structuring of early reaching movements: A longitudinal study”Journal of Motor Behavior23280–292
18.
von HofstenCSpelkeE S, 1985“Object perception and object-directed reaching in infancy”Journal of Experimental Psychology: General114198–212
19.
HuttenlocherD P, 1990“Recognizing solid objects by alignment with an image”Journal of Computer Vision5 (2) 195–212
20.
KanizsaG, 1979Organization in Vision: Essays on Gestalt Perception (New York: Praeger)
21.
Kaufmann-HayozRKaufmannFStuckiM, 1986“Kinetic contours in infants' visual perception”Child Development5753–58
22.
KellmanP J, 1993“Kinematic foundations of infant visual perception”, in Visual Perception and Cognition in Infancy Ed. GranrudC (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum)
23.
KellmanP JShipleyT F, 1991“A theory of visual interpolation in object perception”Cognitive Psychology23141–221
24.
KellmanP JSpelkeE S, 1983“Perception of partly occluded objects in infancy”Cognitive Psychology15483–524
25.
KellmanP JSpelkeE SShortK R, 1986“Infant perception of object unity from translatory motion in depth and vertical translation”Child Development5772–76
26.
KestenbaumRTermineNSpelkeE S, 1987“Perception of objects and object boundaries by three-month-old infants”British Journal of Developmental Psychology5367–383
27.
KoffkaK, 1935Principles of Gestalt Psychology (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World)
28.
LeslieA M, 1991“Infants' understanding of invisible displacement”, paper presented at the biennial meetings of the Society for Research in Child Development, Seattle, WA (abstract)
29.
MandlerJ MMcDonoughL, 1993“Concept formation in infancy”Cognitive Development8291–318
30.
MarkmanE M, 1989Categorization and Naming in Children (Cambridge, MA: Bradford/MIT Press)
31.
MarrD, 1982Vision (San Francisco, CA: W H Freeman)
32.
MarrDNishiharaH K, 1978“Representation and recognition of the spatial organization of three-dimensional shapes”Proceedings of the Royal Society of London Series B207269–294
33.
MeltzoffA NBortonR W, 1979“Intermodal matching by human neonates”Nature (London)282403–404
34.
RossG, 1980“Categorization in 1- to 2-year olds”Developmental Psychology16391–396
35.
SchmidtH, 1985The Role of Gestalt Principles in Perceptual Completion: A Developmental Approach unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA
36.
SchmidtHSpelkeE S, 1984“Gestalt relations and object perception in infancy”, paper presented at the biennial meetings of the International Conference on Infant Studies, New York, NY (abstract)
37.
SchwartzK, 1982Perceptual Knowledge of the Human Face in Infancy unpublished PhD thesis, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA
38.
SchwartzMDayR H, 1979“Visual shape perception in early infancy”Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development44 Serial No. 182
SiegelSCastellanN JJr, 1988Nonparametric Statistics for the Behavioral Sciences2nd edition (New York: McGraw-Hill)
41.
SlaterAMorisonVSomersMMattockABrownETaylorD, 1990“Newborn and older infants' perception of partly occluded objects”Infant Behavior and Development1333–49
42.
SpelkeE S, 1988“Where perceiving ends and thinking begins: The apprehension of objects in infancy”, in Perceptual Development in Infancy: The Minnesota Symposia on Child Psychologyvolume 20, Ed. YoungA (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum)
43.
SpelkeE S, 1990“Principles of object perception”Cognitive Science1429–56
44.
SpelkeE SBreinlingerKMacomberJJacobsonK, 1992“Origins of knowledge”Psychological Review99605–632
45.
SpelkeE Svon HofstenCKestenbaumR, 1989“Object perception and object-directed reaching in infancy: Interaction of spatial and kinetic information for object boundaries”Developmental Psychology25185–196
46.
SpelkeE SVan de WalleG, 1993“Perceiving and reasoning about objects: Insights from infants”, in Spatial Representation Eds EilanNBrewerWMcCarthyR (New York: Basil Blackwell)
47.
StreriA, 1991Voir, Atteindre, Toucher: Les Relations entre la Vision et le Toucher chez le Bébé (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France)
48.
TellerD YBornsteinM H, 1987“Infant color vision and color perception”, in Handbook of Infant Perception volume 1 From Sensation to Perception Eds SalapatekPCohenL (Orlando, FL: Academic Press)
49.
UllmanS, 1989“Aligning pictorial descriptions: An approach to object recognition”Cognition32193–254
50.
van GiffenKHaithM M, 1984“Infant visual response to gestalt geometric forms”Infant Behavior and Development7335–346
51.
WertheimerM, 1923/1958“Principles of perceptual organization”, in Readings in Perception Eds BeardsleeSWertheimerM (Princeton, NJ: Van Nostrand Reinhold1958); translated from German by WertheimerM (originally published in 1923)
52.
WitkinA PTenenbaumJ M, 1983“On the role of structure in vision”, in Human and Machine Vision Eds BeckJHopeBRosenfeldA (New York: Academic Press) pp 481–543
53.
WoodwardA LMarkmanE MFitzsimmonsC M, 1991“Children's rate of learning new words: Is the “naming explosion” a learning explosion?”, paper presented at the biennial meetings of the Society for Research in Child Development, Seattle, WA (abstract)
54.
WynnK, 1992“Addition and subtraction by human infants”Nature (London)358749–750
55.
XuFCareyS, 1992“Infants' concept of numerical identity”, paper presented at the Boston University Language Acquisition Conference, Boston, MA (abstract)
56.
YonasAGranrudC E, 1984“The development of sensitivity to kinetic, binocular, and pictorial depth information in human infants”, in Brain Mechanisms and Spatial Vision Eds IngleDLeeDJeannerodM (Amsterdam: Martinus Nijhoff Press)
57.
YonasAGranrudC E, 1985“Reaching as a measure of infants' spatial perception”, in Measurement of Audition and Vision in the First Year of Life Eds GottliebGKrasnegorN (Norwood, NJ: Ablex)
