Infants' use of featural information in the segregation of stationary objects

Infants' use of featural information (e.g. shape, color, pattern) to segregate stationary displays was investigated in three main experiments. The first experiment showed that 7.5-month-old infants, but not younger infants, were able to form a clear interpretation of a display consisting of a curved yellow cylinder and an adjacent tilted blue box as composed of two separate units. Subsequent experiments determined that infants as young as 4.5 months of age could segregate into two units a simplified version of this display consisting of a straight yellow cylinder and a straight blue box (whether the display was fully visible or boundary-occluded). These results indicate that infants as young as 4.5 months of age can use object features (at least simple ones) to determine the locations of object boundaries. The results are discussed in terms of the processes underlying object segregation in infancy, and why complex features could be difficult for younger, but not older infants to perceive.