| Abstract: | Four studies investigated 29 3-mo-old (Exp IV) and 60 5-mo-old (Exps I–III) infants' capacity to detect proprioceptive–visual relations uniting self-motion with a visual display of that motion. Previous research has shown that 5-mo-old infants can detect the invariant relationship between their own leg motion and a video display of that motion. The 1st 3 experiments showed that the 5-mo-olds discriminated between a perfectly contingent live display of their own leg motion and a noncontingent display of self or a peer. They showed this discrimination by preferential fixation of the noncontingent display. This effect was evident even when an S's direct view of his/her own body was occluded, eliminating video image discrimination on the basis of an intramodal visual comparison between the sight of self-motion and the video display of that motion. These results suggest that the contingency provided by a live display of one's body motion is perceived by detecting the invariant intermodal relationship between proprioceptive information for motion and the visual display of that motion. The detection of these relations may be fundamental to the development of self-perception in infancy. Although 3-mo-olds did not show significant discrimination of the contingent and noncontingent displays in Exp IV, they did show significantly more extreme looking proportions to the 2 displays than did the 5-mo-olds. This may reflect the infant's progression from a self- to a social orientation. (32 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved) |
