Pointing, like eye gaze, is a deictic gesture that can be used to orient the attention of another person towards an object or an event. Previous research suggests that infants first begin to follow a pointing gesture between 10 and 13 months of age. We investigated whether sensitivity to pointing could be seen at younger ages employing a technique…

Two experiments tested whether three- and five-month-old infants could discriminate between upright and inverted versions of point-light displays moving as if attached to the major joints of a walking person. Experiment one investigated discrimination between upright and inverted versions of walker in moving and static displays; experiment two…

Infants five- and seven-months-old were sequentially shown three stimulus arrays of visual elements, only one of which was capable of producing subjective contours. An infant habituation control procedure was used to test infants' abilities to discriminate the arrays. (Author/RH)

Two experiments tested infants' sensitivity to properties of point-light displays of a walker and a runner that were equivalent regarding the phasing of limb movements. Found that 3-, but not 5-month-olds, discriminated these displays. When the symmetrical phase-patterning of the runner display was perturbed by advancing two of its limbs by 25…

Results of a study of 68 infants of 5-14 months revealed that partial optical flow is generally sufficient for inducing postural compensations, but the amplitude and consistency of the response depend on the location of the flow in the optic array. (RJC)

Assessed 13- and 20-week-olds infants' discrimination between shearing stimuli, in which columns of dots move vertically on a screen at different velocities, and foil stimuli, in which all dots move at the same velocity. Results revealed the threshold levels of dot velocity in shearing stimuli at which discrimination occurred. (BC)

The perceived spatiotemporal continuity of objects depends on the way they appear and disappear as they move in the spatial layout. This study investigated whether infants' predictive tracking of a briefly occluded object is sensitive to the manner by which the object disappears and reappears. Five-, 7-, and 9-month-old infants were shown a ball…

Three experiments examined 4- and 6-month-olds' sensitivity to the unity of a partly occluded moving rod undergoing translation, rotation, or oscillation. Findings suggested that all types of common motion were not equivalent for specifying infants' perceptions of occluded objects. (Author)