What aspects of knowledge emerge in children prior to their first contacts with the objects of their knowledge, and what aspects emerge through the shaping effects of experience with those objects? What aspects of knowledge are constant over human development from the moment that infants begin to make sense of the world, and what aspects change as children grow and learn? What aspects of knowledge are universal, and what aspects vary across people in different cultures or with different educational backgrounds? Finally, what aspects of knowledge can people change in themselves or their children with sufficient insight or effort, and what aspects are invari-

The authors examined how visual selection mechanisms may relate to developing cognitive functions in infancy. Twenty-two 3-month-old infants were tested in 2 tasks on the same day: perceptual completion and visual search. In the perceptual completion task, infants were habituated to a partly occluded moving rod and subsequently presented with unoccluded broken and complete rod test stimuli. In the visual search task, infants viewed displays in which single targets of varying levels of salience were cast among homogeneous static vertical distractors. Infants whose posthabituation preference indicated unity perception in the completion task provided evidence of a functional visual selective attention mechanism in the search task. The authors discuss the implications of the efficiency of attentional mechanisms for information processing and learning.

The computation-as-cognition metaphor requires that all cognitive objects are constructed from a fixed set of basic primitives; prominent models of cognition and perception try to provide that fixed set. Despite this effort, however, there are no extant computational models that can actually generate complex concepts and processes from simple and generic basic sets, and there are good reasons to wonder whether such models may be forthcoming. We suggest that one can have the benefits of computationalism without a commitment to fixed feature sets, by postulating processes that slowly develop special-purpose feature languages, from which knowledge is constructed. This provides an alternative to the fixed-model conception without radical anti-representationlism. Substantial evidence suggests that such feature development adaptation actually occurs in the perceptual learning that accompanies category learning. Given the existence of robust methods for novel feature creation, the assumption of a fixed basis set of primitives as psychologically necessary is at best

Preferential looking experiments investigated 5- and LX-month-old infants’ perception and understanding of the motions of a shadow that appeared to be cast by a ball upon a box. When all the surfaces within the display were sta-tionary, infants looked reliably longer when the shadow moved than when the shadow was stationary, indicating that they detected the shadow and its motion. In further experiments, however, infants ’ looking was not consistent with a sensitivity to the shadow’s natural motion: They looked longer at nat-ural events in which the shadow moved with the ball or remained at rest under the moving box than at unnatural events in which the shadow moved with the box or remained at rest under the moving ball. These findings suggest that infants overextend to shadows a principle that applies to material objects: Objects move together if and only if they are in contact. In a final experiment, infants were habituated to a moving shadow that repeatedly violated one aspect of the contact principle. In a subsequent test they failed to infer that the shadow would violate another aspect of the contact principle. Instead, they appeared to suspend all predictions concerning the behavior of the shadow. Because environments are made visible by illumination, and because most sources of illumination are directional, shadows are among the most common This research was supported by NIH grant R37 HD 23 103 to ESS and by fellowships from NSF and from the Fyssen Foundation to GAV. Experiments 1-3 were submitted in partial fulfilment of an honors thesis by JSR to the Cornell College Scholars Program. We thank Gavin Huntley-Fenner and Susan Carey for valuable comments and criticism, Deborah King for help with many aspects of the research, and Ed Snyder for building the apparatus.

Robots and humans receive partial, fragmentary hints about the world’s state through their respective sensors. In this paper, we focus on some fundamental problems in perception that have attracted the attention of researchers in both robotics and infant development: object segregation, intermodal inte-gration, and the role of embodiment. We concentrate on identifying points of contact between the two fields, and also important questions identified in one field and not yet addressed in the other. For object segregation, both fields have examined the idea of using “key events ” where perception is in some way simplified and the infant or robot acquires knowledge that can be exploited at other times. We examine this parallel research in some detail. We propose that the identification of the key events themselves constitutes a point of contact between the fields. And although the specific algorithms used in robots are not easy to relate to infant development, the overall “algorithmic skeleton ” formed by the set of algorithms needed to identify and exploit key events may in fact form a basis for mutual dialogue.

In this chapter, I outline and defend a version of concept empiricism. The theory has

Robots and humans receive partial, fragmentary hints about the world’s state through their respective sensors. These hints – tiny patches of light intensity, frequency components of sound, etc. – are far removed from the world of objects we feel we perceive so effortlessly around us. The study of infant development and the construction of robots are both deeply concerned with how this apparent gap between the world and our experience of it is bridged. In this paper, we focus on some fundamental problems in perception that have attracted the attention of researchers in both robotics and infant development. Our goal is to identify points of contact already existing between the two fields, and also important questions identified in one field that could fruitfully be addressed in the other. We start with the problem of object segregation: how do infants and robots determine visually where one object ends and another begins? For object segregation, both fields have examined the idea of using “key events ” where perception is in some way simplified and the infant or robot acquires knowledge that can be exploited at other times. We propose that the identification of the key events themselves constitutes a point of contact between the fields. And although the specific algorithms used in robots do not necessarily map directly to infant strategies, the overall “algorithmic skeleton ” formed by the set of algorithms needed to identify and exploit key events may in fact form a basis for mutual dialogue. We then look more broadly at the role of embodiment in humans and robots, and see the opportunities it affords for development.

ese relationships, by presenting infants with systematically varying object motions and configurations (see Kellman & Arterberry, 1998, for review). In both the visual and the haptic modes, infants have been found to perceive objects by Correspondence should be addressed to Arlette Streri, Institut de Psychologie--Universite Ren Descartes, Laboratoire "Cognition et Developpement" UMR 8605, 71, avenue Edouard Vaillant, 92774 Boulogne Cedex, France. Email: streri@psycho.univ-paris5.fr This study was supported by a grant from the National Institutes of Health to ES (HD-23103), by James McKeen Cattell and Fogarty Fellowships to ES, and by a Fyssen Fellowship to GV. We thank Chrystelle Lemoine for technical assistance and Kirsten Condry for comments on the manuscript. # 2004 The Experimental Psychology Society http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/pp/02724987.html DOI:10.1080/02724980343000378 THE QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY, 2004, 57A (3), 523--538 Q1859---QJEP(A)14101 / Mar

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Preparation of this article was supported by NSF Grant SBR-991079. I wish to thank my many