Abstract
Previous studies of infants’ ability to integrate and to utilize relative motion as information for form in the absence of structural cues have primarily involved motions that are uniform in rate, direction, and path within the form to be constructed. In the present study, we examined infants’ ability to integrate relative motion information from motions that are nonuniform along these dimensions, and from this integrative process to construct a coherently rotating two-dimensional form. Infants’ ability to integrate nonuniform motion was measured with regard to their ability to discriminate the rotating form from a noncoherent control display containing the same absolute motions. The results showed that discrimination of the coherent and incoherent displays was not demonstrated until 7 months of age. Two additional experiments were conducted to rule out the possibility that this discrimination was based on the detection of local regions of coherence, rather than the perception of the global rotating form. In both experiments, the results did not support discrimination based exclusively on local cues alone. From the combined results of all three experiments, we conclude that infants demonstrate the capacity to integrate the information contained within nonuniform trajectories into a coherent structure by 7 months of age.
Article PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.
References
Aslin, R. N., &Shea, S. L. (1990). Velocity thresholds in human infants: Implications for the perception of motion.Developmental Psychology,26, 589–598.
Bertenthal, B. I., Bradbury, A., & Kramer, S. (1989, April).Velocity thresholds in 5-month-old infants. Poster presented at the biennial meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development, Kansas City, MO.
Bertenthal, B. I., Proffitt, D. R., &Cutting, J. E. (1984). Infant sensitivity to figurai coherence in biological motion.Journal of Child Psychology,37, 213–230.
Bertenthal, B. I., Proffitt, D. R., Spetner, N. B., &Thomas, M. A. (1985). The development of infant sensitivity to biomechanical motions.Child Development,56, 531–543.
Granrud, C. E., Yonas, A., Smith, I. M., Arterberry, M. E., Glicksman, M. L. &Sorkness, A. C. (1984). Infants’ sensitivity to accretion and deletion of texture as information for depth at an edge.Child Development,55, 1630–1636.
Ivinskis, A., & Finlay, D. C. (1980, April).Cardiac responses in fourmonth-old infants to stimuli moving at three different velocities. Poster presented at the biennial meeting of the International Conference for Infancy Studies, New Haven, CT.
Kaufmann, F., Stucki, M., &Kaufmann-Hayoz, R. (1985). Development of infants’ sensitivity to slow and rapid motions.Infant Behavior & Development,8, 89–98.
Kellman, J. P., Gleitman, H., &Spelke, E. S. (1989). Object and observer motion in the perception of objects by infants.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance,13, 586–593.
Kellman, J. P., & Short, K. R. (1985, June).Infam object perception from motion information: The problem of rotation. Paper presented at the Third International Conference on Event Perception and Action, Uppsala, Sweden.
Kellman, J. P., &Spelke, E. S. (1983). Perception of partly occluded objects in infancy.Cognitive Psychology,15, 483–524.
Kellman, J. P., Spelke, E. S., &Short, K. R. (1986). Infant perception of object unity from translatory motion in depth and vertical translation.Child Development,57, 72–76.
Koenderink, J. J., &Van Doorn, A. J. (1976). Local structure of movement parallax of the plane.Journal of the Optical Society of America,66, 717–723,
Koenderink, J. J., &Van Doorn, A. J. (1981). Exterospecific component of the motion parallax field.Journal of the Optical Society of America,71, 953–957.
Mckenzie, B. E., &Day, R. H. (1976). Infant attention to stationary and moving objects at different distances.Australian Journal of Psychology,28, 45–51.
Sherrod, L. R. (1979). Social cognition in infants: Attention to the human face.Infant Behavior & Development,2, 279–294.
Siegel, R. M., &Andersen, R. A. (1988). Perception of three dimensional structure from two dimensional motion in monkey and man.Nature,331, 259–261.
Siegel, R. M., &Andersen, R. A. (1990). Perception of structure from motion in monkey and man.Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience,2, 306–319.
Spelke, E. S. (1988). Where perceiving ends and thinking begins: The apprehension of objects in infancy. In A. Yonas (Ed,),The development of perception: Minnesota Symposium on Child Psychology (pp. 197–234). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Spitz, R. V., & Kleffner, D. (1990, April).Infant perception of coherent motion: The effect of spatial displacement. Paper presented at the biennial meeting of the International Conference on Infant Studies, Montreal.
Spitz, R. V., & Kleffner, D. (1992, May).Global motion integration and the breakdown of directional motion (dmax) between 2 and 7 months. Paper presented at the biennial meeting of the International Conference on Infant Studies, Miami. Wattam-Bell, J. (1990). The development of maximum velocity limits for direction discrimination in infancy. Perception, 19, 369.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Additional information
This work was supported by a grant from The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Network on the Transition from Infancy to Early Childhood, Grant 1 R23 HD2051201, by Grant 1 K04 HD00564-01 from the National Institutes of Child Health and Human Development, Department of Health and Human Services, and by grants from the University of California, San Diego, Academic Senate and Biomedical Research Fund awarded to J.S., as well as a Charles H. Revson Foundation Fellowship NINCDS NS-07467 awarded to R.M.S.,
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Spitz, R.V., Stiles, J. & Siegel, R.M. Infant use of relative motion as information for form: Evidence for spatiotemporal integration of complex motion displays. Perception & Psychophysics 53, 190–199 (1993). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03211729
Received:
Accepted:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03211729