Twelve experiments investigate the early development, in human infants, of perception of the unity of partly occluded surfaces. The experiments focus on a time during ontogeny when there may be evidence of visual sensitivity to information specifying object properties, but limited ability to perceive occlusion, with the goal of observing real-time processes by which the infant assembles visible parts of a stimulus into a coherent whole. This approach stipulates that onset of sensitivity to motion and orientation information, development of the oculomotor system, and experience viewing objects undergoing occlusion and disocclusion, play a direct, foundational role in the ontogeny of object perception. That is, there is an hypothesized period, 2 to 4 months of age, during which infants come to use newly-emerged visual skills to perceive objects accurately. The experiments follow a similar strategy: explorations of individual and group differences in both basic visual processing skills and perception of the unity of partly occluded surfaces. Infant perception is assessed with two methods: (a) recording of eye movements, to measure improvements in pickup of important visual .information, and (b) habituation/dishabituation, to ascertain perception of object unity as well as to determine the extent of sensitivity to available visual information. It is expected that the detailed analysis of individual differences afforded by this approach provide the opportunity for exceptionally sensitive measures of the emergence of visual skills and object knowledge. The short-term objectives of the present proposal are to elucidate fundamental developmental mechanisms in the context of the classic nature-nurture debate. The long-term goals are to shed light on the larger question of how knowledge is acquired and structured in the human, and how perceptual skills impact knowledge acquisition and structure. In the future, such understanding may aid in the formulation of diagnostics and treatments for some developmental disorders.
| Tsang, Tawny; Ogren, Marissa; Peng, Yujia et al. (2018) Infant perception of sex differences in biological motion displays. J Exp Child Psychol 173:338-350 |
| Gillespie-Lynch, Kristen; Khalulyan, Allie; Del Rosario, Mithi et al. (2015) Is early joint attention associated with school-age pragmatic language? Autism 19:168-77 |
| Kim, Hojin I; Johnson, Scott P (2014) Detecting 'infant-directedness' in face and voice. Dev Sci 17:621-7 |
| Frank, Michael C; Amso, Dima; Johnson, Scott P (2014) Visual search and attention to faces during early infancy. J Exp Child Psychol 118:13-26 |
| Ter Schure, Sophie; Mandell, Dorothy J; Escudero, Paola et al. (2014) Learning Stimulus-Location Associations in 8- and 11-Month-Old Infants: Multimodal versus Unimodal Information. Infancy 19:476-495 |
| Del Rosario, Mithi; Gillespie-Lynch, Kristen; Johnson, Scott et al. (2014) Parent-reported temperament trajectories among infant siblings of children with autism. J Autism Dev Disord 44:381-93 |
| Shuwairi, Sarah M; Johnson, Scott P (2013) Oculomotor Exploration of Impossible Figures in Early Infancy. Infancy 18:221-232 |
| Gillespie-Lynch, K; Elias, R; Escudero, P et al. (2013) Atypical gaze following in autism: a comparison of three potential mechanisms. J Autism Dev Disord 43:2779-92 |
| Gluckman, Maxie; Johnson, Scott P (2013) Attentional capture by social stimuli in young infants. Front Psychol 4:527 |
| Vlach, Haley A; Johnson, Scott P (2013) Memory constraints on infants' cross-situational statistical learning. Cognition 127:375-82 |
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