VISUAL POP-OUT IN YOUNG INFANTS - CONVERGENT EVIDENCE AND AN EXTENSION

The familiarization/novelty-preference procedure was used to test for visual pop-out of two possible perceptual primitives, line-crossings a nd orientation differences, in 3- to 4-month-old infants. In Experimen t 1, infants familiarized with an array consisting of either 25 + or L (or T) micropatterns subsequently preferred a test stimulus that cont ained a single novel micropattern among 24 familiar distracters when i t was paired with a stimulus that contained a single familiar micropat tern among 24 novel distracters. This result indicates that the discre pant and presumed pop-out element captured attention and directed infa nt looking. Experiment 2 revealed that an oblique among verticals (or vice versa) also elicited a pop-out effect. These findings provide con vergent evidence of visual pop-out in young infants. They also indicat e that, as in adults, pop-out of orientation differences in early infa ncy is engendered by coarse coding of lines into ''tilted'' versus ''n ontilted'' categories.