Infants’ discrimination of crossed and uncrossed horizontal disparity

• Published in: Attention, perception & psychophysics Vol. 76; no. 5; pp. 1429 - 1436
• Main Author: KAVSEK, Michael
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Boston Springer US 01.07.2014; Springer; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Age; Babies; Behavioral Science and Psychology; Biological and medical sciences; Cognitive Psychology; Depth Perception; Depth Perception - physiology; Discrimination; Discrimination (Psychology) - physiology; Experiments; Female; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Humans; Infant; Male; Motion Perception - physiology; Perception; Perceptual Development; Photic Stimulation; Preferences; Psychology; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychology. Psychophysiology; Stimuli; Studies; Vision; Young Children; Stereoscopic vision; Binocular vision; Perceptual development; Horizontal disparity; Infant vision; Human; Infant; Cognition; Horizontality; Space perception; Experimental study; Perception; Disparity; Stereopsis; Stimulus discrimination
• ISSN: 1943-3921; 1943-393X
• DOI: 10.3758/s13414-014-0665-8

In a series of preferential-looking experiments, infants 5 to 6 months of age were tested for their responsiveness to crossed and uncrossed horizontal disparity. In Experiments 1 and 2 , infants were presented with dynamic random dot stereograms displaying a square target defined by either a 0.5° crossed or a 0.5° uncrossed horizontal disparity and a square control target defined by a 0.5° vertical disparity. In Experiment 3 , infants were presented with the crossed and the uncrossed horizontal disparity targets used in Experiments 1 and 2 . According to the results, the participants looked more often at the crossed (Experiment 1 ), as well as the uncrossed (Experiment 2 ), horizontal disparity targets than at the vertical disparity target. These results suggest that the infants were sensitive to both crossed and uncrossed horizontal disparity information. Moreover, the participants exhibited a natural visual preference for the crossed over the uncrossed horizontal disparity (Experiment 3 ). Since prior research established natural looking and reaching preferences for the (apparently) nearer of two objects, this finding is consistent with the hypothesis that the infants were able to extract the depth relations specified by crossed (near) and uncrossed (far) horizontal disparity.