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: 7001926
• 负责人: Peter M Vishton
• 金额: $ 16万
• 依托单位: COLLEGE OF WILLIAM AND MARY
• 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/7001926
• 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.

提出的十二个实验将有助于更好地理解婴儿如何将周围环境解析为离散的物体，确定视觉阵列的哪些区域组合在一起构成统一的物体，哪些区域不组合在一起。 以前的许多研究都致力于这个主题，但几乎所有研究都完全依赖于注意力注视时间行为的测量和习惯化/去习惯化的方法。 本研究采用了一种基于到达行为的新评估方法。 年幼的婴儿倾向于一次触及一个物体的外部边界。 通过检查婴儿如何接触目标显示器，可以评估他们如何在视觉上将显示器解析为离散的、可抓握的单元。 通过系统地改变特定格式塔线索与目标显示中的连通性的存在，所提出的实验将确定哪些线索介导了不同年龄段的这种面向对象的触及行为。将使用相同的显示器和观看条件进行习惯/去习惯研究，以便直接比较格式塔感知的两种测量方法。 如果用新的到达方法获得的结果与用观看时间测量获得的结果相匹配，所提出的实验将为人类知觉发展的任务一般特性提供收敛证据。 就这两种测量方法调用不同来源的格式塔信息而言，实验将表明，伸手和注意观察行为是由两种不同的、特定于任务的物体感知过程和/或两种不同的、特定于任务的基础知识结构介导的。 考虑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如何相互作用。习惯/去习惯研究提供了有关婴儿物体感知过程的大量令人信服的详细知识。 观察时间研究揭示的过程是调节所有行为还是仅调节观察时间行为？ 通过在相同的观看条件下使用相同的显示器进行伸手和注视时间研究，并评估介导伸手和注视的物体感知过程，可以解决这个关键的理论问题。