Object Perception in Infancy

The study of long-term and short-term memory has along tradition in psychology and led to thedevelopment of theories of cognition and memory.While many aspects of these two memory systems havebeen investigated in adults as well as children, theemergence and development of visual short-term memoryhas received relatively little attention in earlychildhood research. This book presents two studiesthat examined the storage capacity of visualshort-term memory during early infancy as well as thetype of information that is represented in thistemporary store. Two storage hypotheses (object-basedand feature-based) were tested for their ability todescribe the nature of infants' objectrepresentations. The discussion focuses on theobserved developmental changes in the amount ofinformation infants can hold in visual short-termmemory and the suitability of the object-based andfeature-based storage hypotheses in describinginfants' short-term object percepts. The presentresearch should be of interest not only toresearchers working with infants but also to thoseinvestigating visual short-term memory in adults andverbal children.

Autorentext

Evelyn Bertin, Ph.D. Studied Experimental Psychology (Area: Developmental Psychology) at the University of Kentucky, USA. Post Doctoral Fellow at the Max-Planck-Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. Currently Senior Research Assistant and Head of the Infant Laboratory at the University of Zürich, Switzerland.

Klappentext
The study of long-term and short-term memory has a long tradition in psychology and led to the development of theories of cognition and memory. While many aspects of these two memory systems have been investigated in adults as well as children, the emergence and development of visual short-term memory has received relatively little attention in early childhood research. This book presents two studies that examined the storage capacity of visual short-term memory during early infancy as well as the type of information that is represented in this temporary store. Two storage hypotheses (object-based and feature-based) were tested for their ability to describe the nature of infants' object representations. The discussion focuses on the observed developmental changes in the amount of information infants can hold in visual short-term memory and the suitability of the object-based and feature-based storage hypotheses in describing infants' short-term object percepts. The present research should be of interest not only to researchers working with infants but also to those investigating visual short-term memory in adults and verbal children.