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Paul C Quinn

Publications and source records attributed to Paul C Quinn.

17 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2006

The interplay between perceptual organization and categorization in the representation of complex visual patterns by young infants.

The relation between perceptual organization and categorization processes in 3- and 4-month-olds was explored. The question was whether an invariant part abstracted during category learning could interfere with Gestalt organizational processes. A 2003 study by Quinn and Schyns had reported that an initial category familiarization experience in which infants were presented with visual patterns consisting of a pacman shape and a complex polygon could interfere with infants' subsequent good continuation-based parsing of a circle from visual patterns consisting of a circle and a complex polygon. However, an alternative noninterference explanation for the results was possible because the pacman had been presented with greater frequency and duration than had the circle. The current study repeated Quinn and Schyns's procedure but provided an equivalent number of familiarization trials and duration of study time for the infants to process the pacman during initial familiarization and the circle during subsequent familiarization. The results replicated the previous findings of Quinn and Schyns. The data are consistent with the interference account and suggest that a cognitive system of adaptable feature creation can take precedence over organizational principles with which a perceptual system comes pre-equipped.

Cognition↗
PubMed2006

Are some gestalt principles deployed more readily than others during early development? The case of lightness versus form similarity.

Four experiments investigated how readily infants achieve perceptual organization by lightness and form similarity. Infants were (a) familiarized with elements that could be organized into rows or columns on the basis of lightness or form similarity and tested with vertical versus horizontal bars depicting the familiar versus novel organization or (b) familiarized with bars and tested with elements. For lightness similarity, generalization occurred in both tasks; however, for form similarity, generalization occurred only in the elements --> bars task. The findings indicate that lightness similarity is more readily deployed than form similarity and are discussed in the context of (a) whether the difference reflects speed of application or experience-based learning, (b) evidence from visual agnosic patients and the time course of application of the principles in healthy adults, and (c) development of dorsal and ventral visual processing streams.

Child Development↗
PubMed2006

Neural markers of categorization in 6-month-old infants.

Little is known of the neural processes that underlie concept-formation abilities in human infants. We investigated category-learning processes in infants both by using a common behavioral measure and by recording the brain's electrical activity (event-related potentials, or ERPs). ERPs were recorded while 6-month-olds viewed cat images during training, followed by novel cat images interspersed with novel dog images during test. The data indicate that distinct neural signals correspond with learning of a category presented during familiarization, preferential responding to a novel category, and representation of category exemplars at multiple levels of inclusiveness. The results suggest that fundamental components of the neural architecture supporting object categorization are functional within the first half-year of postnatal life, before infants acquire language and young children engage in formal learning of semantic categories. The findings are discussed in terms of their implications for models of category learning and development.

Arousal↗
PubMed2006

Infants' sensitivity to uniform connectedness as a cue for perceptual organization.

A new grouping principle, uniform connectedness (UC), has been posited to be a basic organizer of visual pattern information, one that takes precedence over other, more classic grouping principles (Palmer & Rock, 1994), but its ontogenetic origins have not previously been investigated. We examined whether 3- to 4-month-olds and 6- to 7-month-olds utilize UC to organize static two-dimensional displays. Infants habituated to uniformly connected patterns exhibited a novelty preference for disconnected element patterns, whereas those without any habituation failed to exhibit a preference. The results indicate that infants are sensitive to UC as a cue for perceptual organization. Prior studies indicate that some Gestalt principles (e.g., common movement) are functional during the first half year of life, but that other principles (e.g., form similarity) are less readily available. The present finding showing that young infants are sensitive to UC points to the foundational nature of this cue and adds to an emerging body of evidence indicating that at least some of the mechanisms believed to produce perceptual organization in adults are already operational in the first months of life.

Cues↗
PubMed2005

Learning perceptual organization in infancy.

It has been demonstrated that older infants (6- to 7-month-olds), but not younger infants (3- to 4-month-olds), use form similarity to organize stimuli consisting of X and O elements. We investigated whether utilization of form similarity is governed by maturation or experience by contrasting how infants perform when familiarized with a single exemplar versus multiple exemplars depicting a particular organization. In Experiment 1, 3- to 4-month-olds failed to organize alternating columns or rows of squares and diamonds or Hs and Is, respectively. In Experiment 2, same-aged infants familiarized with all three patterns (X-O, square-diamond, H-I) displayed evidence of organization. The results suggest that 3- to 4-month-olds can use form similarity to organize visual patterns in a concept-formation task. The findings imply that perceptual organization based on form similarity is learned through experience with multiple patterns depicting a common arrangement, rather than immediately apprehended in an individual pattern.

Concept Formation↗
PubMed2005

Three-month-olds, but not newborns, prefer own-race faces.

Adults are sensitive to the physical differences that define ethnic groups. However, the age at which we become sensitive to ethnic differences is currently unclear. Our study aimed to clarify this by testing newborns and young infants for sensitivity to ethnicity using a visual preference (VP) paradigm. While newborn infants demonstrated no spontaneous preference for faces from either their own- or other-ethnic groups, 3-month-old infants demonstrated a significant preference for faces from their own-ethnic group. These results suggest that preferential selectivity based on ethnic differences is not present in the first days of life, but is learned within the first 3 months of life. The findings imply that adults' perceptions of ethnic differences are learned and derived from differences in exposure to own- versus other-race faces during early development.

Choice Behavior↗
PubMed2005

Good continuation affects discrimination of visual pattern information in young infants.

A familiarization-novelty preference procedure was used to determine whether 3- to 4-month-old and 6- to 7-month-old infants utilize the Gestalt principle of good continuation to organize visual patterns. The study involved presentation of a target item (i.e., a square or diamond) either in-line or off-line with a set of distractor items (i.e., circles). Infants in both age groups responded to a change in the target element in the off-line, but not in the in-line, condition. The results suggest that infants organize visual pattern information in accord with the principle of good continuation. Implications of this finding for models of the ontogenesis and microgenesis of object perception in infants and adults are discussed.

Child Development↗
PubMed2004

The role of bottom-up processing in perceptual categorization by 3- to 4-month-old infants: simulations and data.

Disentangling bottom-up and top-down processing in adult category learning is notoriously difficult. Studying category learning in infancy provides a simple way of exploring category learning while minimizing the contribution of top-down information. Three- to 4-month-old infants presented with cat or dog images will form a perceptual category representation for cat that excludes dogs and for dog that includes cats. The authors argue that an inclusion relationship in the distribution of features in the images explains the asymmetry. Using computational modeling and behavioral testing, the authors show that the asymmetry can be reversed or removed by using stimulus images that reverse or remove the inclusion relationship. The findings suggest that categorization of nonhuman animal images by young infants is essentially a bottom-up process.

Analysis of Variance↗
PubMed2004

Visual perception of orientation is categorical near vertical and continuous near horizontal.

Four experiments were conducted to examine whether visual-orientation information is perceived categorically. In experiments 1 and 3, adult participants sorted oriented line stimuli into broad oblique and narrow vertical or horizontal categories. Experiments 2 and 4 showed that categorical discrimination of orientation occurred only near the vertical-oblique boundary. The data indicate that there is categorical perception near vertical and more continuous perception near horizontal. The results are relevant to the debate over whether categorical perception is derived from perceptual structure, verbal coding, or within-task learning. In addition, the asymmetrical perception of orientation around vertical and horizontal is consistent with the possibility that there may be differences in the functional significance of orientation near the two main axes.

Adult↗
PubMed2004

Spatial representation by young infants: categorization of spatial relations or sensitivity to a crossing primitive?

The spatial representation abilities of 3- to 4-month-old infants were examined in four experiments. Experiments 1 and 2 showed that infants familiarized with a diamond appearing in distinct locations to the left or right of a vertical bar subsequently preferred a stimulus depicting the diamond on the opposite side of the bar over a stimulus depicting the diamond in a novel location on the same side of the bar. Experiment 3 was a replication of Experiment 1, except that the bar was oriented at 45 degrees. In this instance, infants divided their attention between the stimulus depicting the diamond on the opposite side of the bar and the stimulus depicting the diamond in a novel location on the same side of the bar. Experiment 4 demonstrated that the results of Experiment 3 were not a consequence of a failure to process the diagonal bar. When considered with previous reports that infants can represent the categories of above and below (Quinn, 1994), the present results suggest that (1) infants can also represent the categories of left and right, and (2) performance cannot be interpreted as a response to an arbitrary crossing of one object relative to another. Although recent discussions of the relation between language and cognition have pointed to the ways in which spatial language influences spatial cognition (Bowerman & Levinson, 2001), the present findings are consistent with an influence in the opposite direction: Spatial cognition may in some instances shape spatial language.

Cognition↗
PubMed2004

Is the asymmetry in young infants' categorization of humans versus nonhuman animals based on head, body, or global gestalt information?

Quinn and Eimas (1998) reported an asymmetry in the exclusivity of the category representations that young infants form for humans and nonhuman animals: category representations for nonhuman animal species were found to exclude humans, whereas a category representation for humans was found to include nonhuman animal species (i.e., cats, horses). The present experiment utilized the familiarization/novelty-preference procedure with 3- and 4-month-olds to determine the perceptual cues (i.e., whole stimulus, head alone, body alone) that provided the basis for this asymmetry. The data revealed the asymmetry to be observable only with the whole animal stimuli and not when infants were provided with information from just the head or the body of the exemplars. The results indicate that the incorporation of nonhuman animal species into a category representation for humans is based on holistic information.

Animals↗
PubMed2003

Development of an abstract category representation for the spatial relation between in 6- to 10-month-old infants.

Nine experiments examined the formation of an abstract category representation for the spatial relation between by 6- to 10-month-old infants. The experiments determined that 9- to 10-month-olds, but not 6- to 7-month-olds, could form an abstract category representation for between when performing in an object-variation version of the between categorization task. The results also demonstrated that 6- to 7-month-olds could form category representations for between in the object-variation version of the between categorization task but that such representations were specific to the particular objects presented. The evidence confirms that representations for different spatial relations emerge at different points during development, and suggests that each representation undergoes its own period of development from concrete to abstract.

Child Development↗
PubMed2002

Representation of the gender of human faces by infants: a preference for female.

Six experiments based on visual preference procedures were conducted to examine gender categorization of female versus male faces by infants aged 3 to 4 months. In experiment 1, infants familiarized with male faces preferred a female face over a novel male face, but infants familiarized with female faces divided their attention between a male face and a novel female face. Experiment 2 demonstrated that these asymmetrical categorization results were likely due to a spontaneous preference for females. Experiments 3 and 4 showed that the preference for females was based on processing of the internal facial features in their upright orientation, and not the result of external hair cues or higher-contrast internal facial features. While experiments 1 through 4 were conducted with infants reared with female primary caregivers, experiment 5 provided evidence that infants reared with male primary caregivers tend to show a spontaneous preference for males. Experiment 6 showed that infants reared with female primary caregivers displayed recognition memory for individual females, but not males. These results suggest that representation of information about human faces by young infants may be influenced by the gender of the primary caregiver.

Affect↗
PubMed2002

Development of form similarity as a Gestalt grouping principle in infancy.

Given evidence demonstrating that infants 3 months of age and younger can utilize the Gestalt principle of lightness similarity to group visually presented elements into organized percepts, four experiments using the familiarization/novelty-preference procedure were conducted to determine whether infants can also organize visual pattern information in accord with the Gestalt principle of form similarity. In Experiments 1 and 2, 6- to 7-month-olds, but not 3- to 4-month-olds, presented with generalization and discrimination tasks involving arrays of X and O elements responded as if they organized the elements into columns or rows based on form similarity. Experiments 3 and 4 demonstrated that the failure of the young infants to use form similarity was not due to insufficient processing time or the inability to discriminate between the individual X and O elements. The results suggest that different Gestalt principles may become functional over different time courses of development, and that not all principles are automatically deployed in the manner originally proposed by Gestalt theorists.

Child Development↗
PubMed2000

A connectionist account of asymmetric category learning in early infancy.

Young infants show unexplained asymmetries in the exclusivity of categories formed on the basis of visually presented stimuli. A connectionist model is described that shows similar exclusivity asymmetries when categorizing the same stimuli presented to infants. The asymmetries can be explained in terms of an associative learning mechanism, distributed internal representations, and the statistics of the feature distributions in the stimuli. The model was used to explore the robustness of this asymmetry. The model predicts that the asymmetry will persist when a category is acquired in the presence of mixed category exemplars. An experiment with 3-4-month-olds showed that asymmetric exclusivity persisted in the presence of mixed-exemplar familiarization, thereby confirming the model's prediction.

Association Learning↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Development of subordinate-level categorization in 3- to 7-month-old infants.

Visual preference procedures were used to investigate development of perceptually based subordinate-level categorization in 3- to 7-month-old infants. Experiments 1 and 2 demonstrated that 3- to 4-month-olds did not form category representations for photographic exemplars of subordinate-level classes of cats and dogs (i.e., Siamese vs. Tabby, Beagle vs. Saint Bernard). Experiments 3 though 5 showed that 6- and 7-month-olds formed a category representation for Tabby that excluded Siamese and a category representation for Saint Bernard that excluded Beagle, but they did not form a category representation for Siamese that excluded Tabby or a category representation for Beagle that excluded Saint Bernard. The findings are consistent with a differentiation-driven view of early perceptual category development from global to basic to subordinate levels.

Choice Behavior↗