Infants' encoding of kinetic displays varying in relative coherence.

Bertenthal, B., Proffitt, D., Kramer, S., & Spetner, N. (1987). Infants’ encoding of kinetic displays varying in relative coherence.. Developmental Psychology, 23(2), 171.

Abstract

Two experiments were conducted to assess 3-month-old infants' processing of moving point-light displays depicting the biomechanical motions of a person walking. The displays were computer-generated and varied in stimulus coherence as measured by a version of coding theory. An infant-control habituation paradigm was used to measure both encoding and discrimination of the stimuli. Experiment 1 involved two point-light displays with identical absolute motions but different degrees of relative coherence. The results revealed that these two displays were discriminable and that encoding was systematically related to their relative coherence. Experiment 2 revealed that two new displays varying less in their coherence were also differentially encoded but were not discriminated. It was concluded that infants' processing of kinetic displays varies as a function of their relative coherence.
Last updated on 11/26/2020