Reaching as a Yardstick for Infant Gestalt Perception

作为婴儿格式塔知觉的衡量标准

• 批准号: 6359719
• 负责人: Peter M Vishton
• 金额: $ 18.79万
• 依托单位: NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2001
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2001-07-01 至 2006-05-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/6359719
• 关键词: attention; behavior test; behavioral /social science research tag; behavioral habituation /sensitization; child psychology; clinical research; cues; discrimination learning; human subject; infant human (0-1 year); limb movement; memory; neuropsychological tests; perception; stimulus /response; videotape /videodisc; visual feedback; visual perception; visual stimulus; visual tracking

The twelve proposed experiments will enable a better understanding of how infants parse their surroundings into discrete objects, determining which regions of the visual array go together to make up unified objects and which do not. Much previous research has been dedicated to this topic, but nearly all of it has relied exclusively on measures of attentive looking time behaviors and the method of habituation/dishabituation. A new method of assessment, based on reaching behaviors, is employed for the proposed studies. Young infants tend to reach for the outer boundaries of one object at a time. By examining how infants reach for a target display it is thus possible to assess how they have visually parsed the display into discrete, graspable units. By systematically varying the presence of specific Gestalt cues to connectedness in the target display, the proposed experiments will determine which cues mediate this object-directed reaching behavior at different ages. Habituation/dishabituation studies will be conducted using identical displays and viewing conditions in order to allow a direct comparison of the two measures of Gestalt perception. To the extent that the results obtained with the new reaching method match those obtained with the looking time measure, the proposed experiments will provide converging evidence for task-general properties of human perceptual development. To the extent that the two measures invoke the use of different sources of Gestalt information, the experiments will suggest that reaching and attentive looking behaviors are mediated by two distinct, task- specific processes of object perception and/or two distinct, task-specific structures of underlying knowledge. Consideration of these differences will enable a better understanding of how perception and action processes interact in early infancy. Habituation/dishabituation studies have provided a wealth of compelling, detailed knowledge about infants' processes of object perception. Do the processes revealed by looking time studies mediate all behaviors or only looking time behaviors? By conducting reaching and looking time studies with the same displays, presented under the same viewing conditions, and assessing the object perception processes that mediate reaching and looking, this critical theoretical question can be addressed.

这12个被提议的实验将有助于更好地理解婴儿如何将他们的环境解析成离散的物体，确定视觉阵列的哪些区域组合在一起构成统一的物体，哪些区域不是。之前的许多研究都致力于这个主题，但几乎所有的研究都依赖于专注的观察时间行为和习惯化/不习惯化的方法。本文提出了一种基于达到行为的评价方法。年幼的婴儿倾向于一次触及一个物体的外部边界。通过检查婴儿如何到达目标显示器，因此有可能评估他们如何在视觉上将显示器解析成离散的，可掌握的单元。通过系统地改变目标显示中特定格式塔线索对连接性的存在，所提出的实验将确定哪些线索介导了不同年龄的对象导向伸手行为。习惯化/非习惯化研究将使用相同的显示器和观看条件进行，以便直接比较格式塔感知的两种测量方法。在某种程度上，用新的到达方法得到的结果与用寻找时间测量得到的结果相匹配，所提出的实验将为人类感知发展的任务一般性质提供收敛证据。在某种程度上，这两种测量方法调用了不同格式塔信息来源的使用，实验将表明，到达和注意观看行为是由两个不同的、任务特定的对象感知过程和/或两个不同的、任务特定的基础知识结构介导的。考虑到这些差异将有助于更好地理解婴儿早期的感知和行动过程是如何相互作用的。习惯化/非习惯化研究提供了大量引人注目的、详细的关于婴儿物体感知过程的知识。看时间研究揭示的过程是调解所有行为还是只调解看时间行为？通过使用相同的显示器，在相同的观看条件下进行触摸和观看时间研究，并评估调解触摸和观看的物体感知过程，可以解决这个关键的理论问题。