Object recognition and attention to object components by preschool children and 4-month-old infants

• Published in: Journal of experimental child psychology Vol. 86; no. 2; pp. 108 - 123
• Main Authors: Haaf, Robert A, Fulkerson, Anne L, Jablonski, Brandon J, Hupp, Julie M, Shull, Stacey S, Pescara-Kovach, Lisa
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: San Diego, CA Elsevier Inc 01.10.2003; Elsevier
• Subjects: Age Differences; Attention; Attention Control; Biological and medical sciences; Child; Child development; Child, Preschool; Developmental psychology; Discrimination Learning; Experiments; Female; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Habituation; Habituation, Psychophysiologic; Humans; Infant; Infants; Male; Memory; Mental Representation; Newborn. Infant; Object Characteristics; Object recognition; Object representation; Performance Factors; Preschool Children; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychology. Psychophysiology; Random Allocation; Recognition (Psychology); Research Methodology; Theories; Visual Perception; Visual Preference Technique; Visual Stimuli; Object recognition; Memory; Attention; Object representation; Visual perception; Human; Preschool age; Recognition memory; Infant; Cognition; Experimental study; Vision; Perception; Cognitive development; Child
• ISSN: 0022-0965; 1096-0457
• DOI: 10.1016/S0022-0965(03)00108-5

The present research investigated attention to and recognition of components in compound stimuli by infants and preschool children. A preliminary experiment was conducted with adults to develop stimulus components and to validate their structure. An experiment using an oddity task with preschoolers ( N=32) and one using the familiarization/novelty-preference task with infants ( N=64) demonstrated successful discrimination among the stimulus components on the basis of edge property information. Separate experiments using a matching task with preschoolers ( N=32) and an habituation task with infants ( N=32) demonstrated that preschoolers and infants are also able to direct attention to and recognize components of compound stimuli. Implications for structural-description theories of object recognition are discussed.