Abstract
It has been established that 7-month-old infants perceive 3-D layout from motion-carried, binocular, and static-monocular depth cues, by using preferential reaching. In these studies, infants reached to the apparently closer part of the display. Reaching preference was compared under monocular and binocular viewing conditions. Perception of depth from pictorial cues was less consistent in younger infants. A different response is required to gauge depth perception in infants who are too immature to reach with precision. There is some evidence that infants prefer to fixate the apparently closer of two objects. The goal of the first study was to test the hypothesis that young infants prefer to fixate the apparently closer portion of a display. STUDY 1: Four-month-old infants (n=28) were presented with boundary-flow (relative motion) information for depth. Infants viewed the display binocularly because it is known that adults perceive a strong depth effect when boundary-flow display is viewed binocularly. Eye fixation and duration were analyzed using an eye tracker. Results: We found no evidence that the apparently closer part of the display received more attention by 4-month-old infants. STUDY 2: Four to 5-month-old infants (n=8) were presented with a highly effective combination of two pictorial depth cues, familiar size and relative size, and a trapezoidal window display viewed with one or two eyes. Motion of the displays was presented to attract attention. Results: We found no evidence that the apparently closer part of the display received more attention monocularly than binocularly. CONCLUSIONS: Preferential looking may be an ineffective method for evaluating the development of sensitivity to depth information in infants too immature to reach. A tendency to look at closer objects may appear between 4 months or 5 months as infants begin to reach to objects within reach. We plan to test older infants to explore this possibility.
Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2014