PICTURE PERCEPTION IN INFANCY

This research investigated simple picture perception in 5-month-old infants, one aspect of the general problem of the recognition of invariance across transformations. We were particularly concerned with two issues: (1) whether simple picture perception, i.e., the correspondence between objects and pictures of them, must be learned gradually; and (2) to what extent are infants capable of recognizing two-dimensional stimuli varying in degree of resemblance to three-dimensional objects. In Experiment 1, the infants were familiarized with a small doll. On subsequent novelty preference tests, they showed transfer to both color and black-and-white photographs of the doll. In Experiment 2 infants familiarized with a color photograph of a human face were able to recognize line drawings of the face. The results of the first two studies were interpreted as strongly supporting the view that simple picture perception does not have to be learned by infants. These results also indicated a surprising ability on the part of 5-month-olds to recognize relatively abstract two-dimensional stimuli. Experiment 3 demonstrated that the results of the first two studies were due to the infants' recognition of similarity among the various stimuli rather than a failure to discriminate between them. © 1979 Ablex Publishing Corporation.