The whole picture: Holistic body posture recognition in infancy

Abstract

Holistic processing is tied to expertise and is characteristic of face and body perception by adults. Infants process faces holistically, but it is unknown whether they process body information holistically. In the present study, infants were tested for discrimination between body postures that differed in limb orientations in three conditions: in the context of the whole body, with just the isolated limbs that changed orientation, or with the limbs in the context of scrambled body parts. Five- and 9-month-olds discriminated between whole-body postures, but failed in the isolated-part and scrambled-body conditions, demonstrating holistic processing of information from bodies. These results indicate that at least some level of expertise in body processing develops quite early in life.

Visual scanning of male and female bodies in infancy

“…As described earlier, young infants are sensitive to sex information in both faces and bodies (Alexander et al, 2016; Hock et al, 2016; Quinn et al, 2002). In particular, as noted earlier, Alexander et al found that 3-to 18-month-olds prefer to look at female versus male full-body images.…”

“…For example, by 3.5 months of age, infants exhibit knowledge of the structure of bodies both in terms of body part locations and body part proportions (Gliga & Dehaene-Lambertz, 2005; Zieber, Kangas, Hock, & Bhatt, 2015). Additionally, 5-month-olds process bodies holistically, as evidenced by an ability to discriminate between body postures when images of whole bodies are presented but not when only the body parts are presented in isolation or in the context of a scrambled body (Hock, White, Jubran, & Bhatt, 2016).…”

The Development of Body Structure Knowledge in Infancy

“…Bodies are also processed as holistic entities by adults and children . We used the Tanaka and Farah approach to examine holistic body processing in infancy . We tested 5‐ and 9‐month‐olds' discrimination between body postures that differed in the orientation of an arm and a leg (Figure ).…”

Brain-Inspired Coding of Robot Body Schema Through Visuo-Motor Integration of Touched Events

“…Many research suggest that body knowledge occurs early in life and that the different modalities conspire to represent the body structure and nearby targets. Hock et al found that infants as young as 3 months old are sensitive to the overall organization of body parts; (see Zieber et al, 2015 ; Hock et al, 2016 ; Jubran et al, 2018 ). Meltzoff et al ( 2018 ) reports that the contralateral hand areas of the somatosensory cortex in 7-month-olds' is active during contact with the hands, suggesting neural structures represent hands early in life.…”