TEXTURE SEGMENTATION AND VISUAL-SEARCH BASED ON ORIENTATION CONTRAST - AN INFANT STUDY WITH THE FAMILIARIZATION-NOVELTY PREFERENCE METHOD

Texture segmentation and visual search based on differences in line or ientation were investigated in 3- to 6-month-old infants with a famili arization-novelty preference procedure. After familiarization to a pai r of identical homogeneous textures, 5- to 6-month-old infants showed a significant novelty preference for a texture consisting of oriented lines embedded in a background of elements of an orthogonal orientatio n but not for a single embedded target element. In a second experiment , we tested whether infants base their discrimination on the global pe rception of the embedded texture as a figure. After familiarization to a pair of identical embedded squarelike textures, infants show a high ly significant novelty preference for real diamonds to real squares, a lthough they spontaneously do not prefer diamonds to squares. These re sults indicate that 5- to 6-month-old infants are not only able to seg ment textures by differences in line orientation, but that they also h ave a coherent percept of the embedded texture as a figure of a specif ic shape.