Young Infants' Perception of Partly Occluded Objects

视觉的功能是向观察者提供信息，以便于随后对环境采取行动。准确的感知需要辨别物体的边界、连贯性和统一性。这一过程受到许多物体被其他更近的物体部分遮挡的事实的挑战。在部分遮挡条件下，成功的目标完成取决于对几个视觉信息源的适当关注和利用，如可见表面的亮度、颜色、纹理、运动和深度。对物体知觉的完整描述必须包括对其发展的研究，最近的研究为我们在这一领域的知识提供了重要的信息。有趣的是，婴儿在出生时似乎会对部分被遮挡的物体做出反应，就好像它是由两个不相连的表面组成的，即使它给成年人提供了一种清晰的统一性。相比之下，在两个月大的时候，婴儿被发现在某些情况下能感知客观事物，这项技能在接下来的几个月里会有所提高。因此，人类与生俱来并不具备感知客观事物的能力，但在最初的几个月里，这种能力发展得非常迅速。目前，研究者对客体统一性知觉的发展机制存在分歧。例如，幼儿被认为完全依赖动作，而不是像面部外观这样的其他线索来消除涉及部分遮挡的视觉场景的歧义。其他方法引用了从出生起就指导物体感知的“核心原则”，这样，所有人类观察者，甚至是非常年幼的婴儿，都可以分享对有限的、隔离的物体的感知体验。然而，最近的研究提供了反对这两种观点的证据：幼儿和成年人一样，在物体感知任务中似乎依赖于几个视觉信息来源，包括运动以及确保面孔方向、颜色、纹理和深度。在这一点上，对物体的真实反应的发展是通过对所有这些线索的利用的改进来进行的。尽管在发展物体知觉的理论方法上取得了这一进展，但仍然存在一些重要的问题。本研究将调查婴儿如何对环境中物体的深度和隔离做出反应的问题。我们的目标是进一步阐明在出生后的头几个月里指导这一基本感知技能的制约因素。这将通过测试特定视觉线索在幼儿对物体统一性的感知中的作用，以及探索幼儿对物体显示的视觉扫描，来绘制对视觉线索的注意的发展变化。

The function of vision is to provide information to the observer in orderto facilitate subsequent action on the environment. Accurate perceptionentails discernment of the boundaries, coherence, and unity of objects.This process is challenged by the fact that many objects are partlyoccluded by other, nearer objects. Successful object completion underconditions of partial occlusion resides in the appropriate attention to andutilization of several sources of visual information, such as theluminance, color, texture, motion, and depth of visible surfaces. Acomplete account of object perception must include studies of itsdevelopment, and recent research has contributed important information toour knowledge in this area. Interestingly, at birth infants seem torespond to a partly occluded object as if it consists of two disjointsurfaces, even if it provides a clear percept of unity to adults. By 2months of age, in contrast, infants have been found to perceive objectunity under some circumstances, and this skill improves over the followingmonths. Thus humans are not born with the ability to perceive objectunity, but it develops very rapidly over the first few months. At presentthere are disagreements among researchers with respect to the mechanisms ofdevelopment of perception of object unity. For example, young infants havebeen claimed to rely exclusively on motion, and not other cues such assurface appearance, to disambiguate visual scenes involving partialocclusion. Other approaches invoke "core principles" that guide objectperception from birth, such that the perceptual experience of bounded,segregated objects is shared by all human observers, even very younginfants. Recent research, however, provides evidence against both theseviews: Young infants, like adults, appear to rely on several sources ofvisual information in object perception tasks, including motion as well assurface orientation, color, texture, and depth. On this account, thedevelopment of veridical responses to objects proceeds via improvements inthe utilization of all these cues. Despite this advance in theoreticalapproaches to the development of object perception, important questionsremain. The present research will investigate issues surrounding how infantsrespond to the depth and segregation of objects in their environment. The goal is to further elucidate the constraints that guide this fundamental perceptual skill in the first few months after birth. This will be accomplished by testingthe role of specific visual cues in young infants' perception of object unity, aswell as explorations of young infants' visual scanning of object displays, to chartdevelopmental changes in attention to visual cues.