Early biases and developmental changes in self-generated object views

Abstract

Object recognition depends on the seen views of objects. These views depend in part on the perceivers’ own actions as they select and show object views to themselves. The self-selection of object views from manual exploration of objects during infancy and childhood may be particularly informative about the human object recognition system and its development. Here, we report for the first time on the structure of object views generated by 12 to 36 month old children (N = 54) and for comparison adults (N = 17) during manual and visual exploration of objects. Object views were recorded via a tiny video camera placed low on the participant’s forehead. The findings indicate two viewing biases that grow rapidly in the first three years: a bias for planar views and for views of objects in an upright position. These biases also strongly characterize adult viewing. We discuss the implications of these findings for a developmentally complete theory of object recognition.

Young Children's Self-Generated Object Views and Object Recognition

“…The representation could be rotated to match the orientation of the object held by the child in each frame. The match yielded the three dimensional rotation of the test object in Euler angles (Kuipers, 2002; see Pereira et al, 2010, for details). From this output, a view was categorized as planar, using the procedure specified in Pereira et al (2010) if the front, top or side face of the object was within ± 11.25 degrees of parallel or perpendicular to the child’s line of sight.…”

“…This exploration may be a crucial step in the construction of stored object representations at a very early age, as manual exploration allows children to encode multiple views of objects that may not be acquired through observation alone (Pereira, James, Jones, & Smith, 2010; Perone, Madole, Ross-Sheehy, Carey, & Oakes, 2008; Ruff, 1984; Soska, Adolph, & Johnson, 2010). A crucial question, then, is whether manual exploration actually facilitates object recognition – a reflection of stored object representations.…”

“…Recently, Pereira et al (2010) reported developmental changes across the same period in how toddlers hold objects during visual exploration: older but not younger children held the objects to show themselves planar views. Planar views are defined as views in which (1) the major axis of the object is approximately perpendicular or parallel to the line of sight, and (2) one axis is foreshortened (James, Humphrey, & Goodale, 2001; Perrett, Harries, & Looker, 1992).…”

Using a head-mounted camera to infer attention direction

“…A similar method has previously been used by Billard (2011), Pereira, James, Jones, andSmith (2010), Smith, Yu, and Pereira (2011) and Yoshida and Smith (2008). The participating children in these studies were between 12 and 36 months of age.…”

Children’s Line Drawings and Object Representation Strategies: Categorization of Children’s Mental Representation Strategies According to the Existing Theories for Object Recognition by Studying Line Drawings

“…Yet another active area of research has been concerned with the representation of objects used by children. Bloomington et al focused on viewing effects in object recognition and indicate that there are two viewing biases in children: planar views (i.e., views of objects held perpendicular to the line of sight) and the bias for upright orientation [27]. In [28] it has shown that children categorize superordinate classes based on part differences.…”