Dissociations between featural versus conjunction-based texture processingin infancy: Analyses of three potential contributing factors

Many models of object perception posit that adults encode individual featur es in visual scenes before processing the conjunction relations among these features to generate holostic representations. Prior research suggests tha t infants detect textural discrepancies based on individual features more r eadily than those based on feature conjunctions. While these results sugges t adult-like qualitative differences in infants' processing of features ver sus conjunctions. there are potential alternative explanations. We examined three such explanations: (1) failure to process one of the features that c onstitute the conjunction, (2) failure to encode and remember conjunction i nformation that is necessary to detect conjunction -based textural discrepa ncies, and (3) the fact that conjunction-based discrepancies involve stimul i that are more similar to original stimuli than those involving feature-ba sed discrepancies. None of these factors could explain 5.5-month-olds' supe rior processing of featural than conjunction-based textural discrepancies. Thus. in infancy, as in adulthood, Features and conjunction relations appea r to be processed by qualitatively different mechanisms. (C) 2000 by Academ ic Press.