Visual Tracking and Object Permanence in 5-Month-Old Infants
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University of Massachusetts Amherst ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014 1-1-1975 Visual tracking and object permanence in 5-month-old infants. Susan. Goldberg University of Massachusetts Amherst Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_1 Recommended Citation Goldberg, Susan., "Visual tracking and object permanence in 5-month-old infants." (1975). Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014. 1588. https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_1/1588 This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014 by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. For more information, please contact [email protected]. VISUAL TRACKING AND OBJECT PERMANENCE IN 5 -MONTH-OLD INFANTS A Dissertation Fresented By Susan Goldberg Submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Massachusetts in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY July 1975 Psychology VISUAL TRACKING AND OBJECT PERMANENCE IN 5 -MONTH-OLD INFANTS A Dissertation By Susan Goldberg Approved as to style and content by: Rachel K. Clifton, Chairman of Committee Richard Bogartay Member S. u Roberta Co Hard. Member / u yli William Eichelman, Member Donahoe, Department Head Psychology July, 1975 iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS A completed research project is never the work of a single individual and I would like to acknowledge the assistance of some of the other people who made it possible. The members of my committee were variously involved in different phases of the research, but Rachel Clifton as my advisor deserves special mention. She not only con- tributed her own time and energy, but the resources of her laboratory and its staff. Two faculty members not on the committee were especially helpful: Kay Fite in locating materials on the physiology of the eye, and Dalton Jones whose observations in the laboratory and the enthusiasm that went with them bolstered me immensely at a critical time. Michael Nelson was instrumental in setting up the laboratory and provided invaluable assistance in the early stages of data reduction and analysis. The display equip- ment was designed and built by Al Williams. The under- graduates who served as observers and monitored equipment during experimental sessions were Jackie Craig, Rick Laine, Andy Les, and Peter West. Randy Chow assisted in data reduc- tion and programs for data reduction and Pat Sorce was res- ponsible for the analysis of cardiac data. Janet Leshne iv typed the final manuscript. Financial support was provided from several sources. In addition to funds from the Psychology Department, University of Massachusetts, partial support came from grant HD06753 to Rachel Clifton, grant OCD-90-C-388 to the author, and funds allocated by the Department of Psychology at Brandeis University. Most of all, I wish to thank the parents and infants who participc ted in the study. Recuiting participants was tedious and difficult and, as is usual with infants, some of those who came were not overjoyed with the experience. I am forever grateful to the families who took the time and energy to come. V Visual Tracking and Object Permanence in 5-Month-01d Infants July, 1975 Susan Goldberg, A.B., Antioch College M.S., Tufts University Directed by: Dr. Rachel K. Clifton This study was designed to clarify the interpretation of infant behavior in linear tracking tasks where object novelty and learning effects were previously confounded with assessment of expectations about existence constancy of moving objects. Three kinds of events were presented to 18 males and 18 females of 20 to 24 weeks of age. In all events the object moved from infant's left to right across a 1-meter viewing area at 7cm/sec and was out of sight for 4 seconds as it passed behind a centrally placed screen. In one event, a familiar object was visible on both sides of the screen. In a second event, a novel object was visible on both sides of the screen, and in the third event, a novel object appeared to change to a familiar one behind the screen. Infants were assigned, 6 males and 6 females to each of three conditions which involved different event sequences. vi In each condition, half the males and half the females were assigned to each of two possible familiar objects to be tracked on both sides of the screen three times before the experiment began. in the Control Condition, the familiar object continued to appear on both sides of the screen for 10 trials. In each of the other two conditions every third trial presented either a novel object on both sides of the screen or a novel object which appeared to change to a . amiliar one behind the screen. Visual fixation and cardiac activity were recorded during the session. Different patterns of looking behavior and cardiac de- celeration were predicted for each of the three events (hence each condition) by four differen t hypotheses rep- resenting object concepts for infants. In order to demonstrate behavior consistent with existence constancy, infants had to master four skills in this task which seem to form a logical hierarchy, and may form a developmental hierarchy. Each skill also implies a hypothesis about the primary determinant of infant attention in the task, for example, their use of: 1. trajectory information to track moving objects 2. object discrimination to recognize familiar and novel objects 3. event discrimination to differentiate familiar and novel events 4. generalized event prediction to predict specific reappearances after occlusions for both familiar and novel objects Mastery of the fourth skill is a necessary but not sufficient condition for the assumption of object constancy in this task. The first hypothesis predicted that infants only use trajectory information and would show no dif- ferential behavior to the three events. Each of the other hypotheses predicted different patterns of attention before and after object occlusion during different events. Analysis of visual fixation and cardiac data showed no differences in infant behavior by conditions on the trial where all infants were exposed to familiar objects before the experiment proper began. Analysis of visual fixation data indicated no evidence of differential attention to the three different events and the most consistent finding was a decrease in attention over trials in all conditions. The fixation data were most consistent with the trajectory information hypothesis. In the cardiac data, there was little evidence of decelerative responses to post-occlusion stimuli. On all analyses infants in the two experimental conditions showed more deceleration than Controls during pre-occlusion. Furthermore, separate analysis of pre- . viii occlusion cardiac data for each condition showed that in the experimental conditions the largest decelerations occurred on trials where the novel object appeared. The cardiac data were most consistent with the object discrimination hypothesis The discussion of these results focussed upon the relationship between cardiac and fixation measures of attention and the comparison of present findings with previous studies. The absence of evidence of existence constancy in the age range where it has been previously reported, was explained by the possibility that the previous reports of existence constancy confounded stimulus novelty effects with those of cbject constancy. Methodological and theoretical implications for further research are dis- cussed. ix TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER I. PROBLEM 1 CHAPTER II. BACKGROUND 7 Adult Perception of Occlusion • • . .7 Infant Response to Occlusion 9 An Analysis of Existence Constancy 12 Visual Abilities of Infants 17 Visual tracking 17 Infant response to movement 21 Discrimination of objects 27 Visual memory 33 Event perception and learning 35 Selective attention as an Index of Cognitive Development 39 Cardiac Change as an Index of Attention. ... 46 CHAPTER III. EXPERIMENTAL METHOD 55 Purpose and Rationale 55 Subjects 57 Display Apparatus 58 Recording Apparatus 62 Procedure 64 X Experimental Conditions 66 Hypotheses and Predictions 59 Trajectory information hypothesis 70 Object discrimination hypothesis 71 Limited event prediction hypothesis 72 Generalized event prediction hypothesis. .72 Data Reduction and Analysis 72 CHAPTER IV. RESULTS 75 Analysi. of Visual Fixation Data 76 Stationary pre-test trials 76 Moving pre-test trials 77 Experimental trials 83 Post-test trials 97 Summary 99 Analysis of Cardiac Data 99 Pre-test trials 102 Experimental trials 109 Post-test 131 Summary 131 CHAPTER V. DISCUSSION 133 Cardiac Response and Visual Fixation 133 Other Studies of Existence Constancy 139 xi Implications of the Study 149 xii LIST OF TABLES 1. Summary of Visual Tracking and Object Identity Studies „ 3 2. Infant Expectations and Associated Behaviors Under Four Hypotheses. .' 15 3. Sample Characteristics 59 4. Sequence of Experimental Trials in Each Condition 67 5. Summary Characteristics of Experimental Trial Sequence 68 6. Pre-Test Trials: Groups x Trials x PPO ANOVA on Fixation Time . 79 7. Experimental Trials: Groups x Trial Type ANOVA on Fixation Time 85 8. Experimental Trials: Condition X Trials ANOVA on Fixation Time 86 9. Mean Total Fixation Time Over Experimantal Trials 87 10. Change Trials: Condition x Trials x PPO ANOVA on Fixation Time 92 11. Mean Pre-and Post-Occlusion Fixation Time on Change Trials 93 12. Trials 2 and 3: Condition x Object Type x Trials x PPO ANOVA on Fixation Time 94 13. Trials 2 and 3: Mean Fixation Time in Each Condition by Object Type 96 14. Trials 2 and 3: Mean Fixation Pre-and Post- Occlusion Fixation Time 98 xiii 15. Post-test: Condition x Trials x ppo ANOVA on Fixation Time 10Q 16. Pre-test Trials: Groups x Trials ANOVA on Pre-Occlusion Heart Rate 103 17. Pre-test Trials: Mean Pre-Occlusion Heart Rate for Males and Females by Trials. 105 18. Pre-test Trials: Groups x Trials ANOVA on Post-Occlusion Heart Rate .108 19.