Other studies show that infants modify their manual actions appropriately to register the features and functions of objects and surfaces they explore (e.g., pliable versus solid, smooth versus textured) (Bourgeois, Khawar, Neal, & Lockman, 2005; Palmer, 1989; Ruff, 1984). Infants’ differential responses to such visual and haptic cues may be indicative of their expanding perception of various surfaces and objects. Given

that we already know that younger infants can visually discriminate between pictures of possible and impossible objects, we now ask whether the perception of anomalous pictorial information compound screening assay in the impossible figure would evoke a differential reaching response in 9-month-old infants. We reasoned that the degree

to which infants manually explore depictions of possible versus impossible objects might provide an index of their interpretation of such displays. Accordingly, we measured differences in the number Selleckchem NVP-BGJ398 of manual behaviors attempted toward realistic photographic displays of possible and impossible cube stimuli that were rich in pictorial depth information (e.g., shading, shadows, texture, color, luminance, and interposition cues). If infants apply their investigative activities with equal frequency to both displays, then this would be interpreted as indiscriminate exploratory action. However, if infants initiate increased exploratory actions toward one of the displays relative to the other, this Vildagliptin would be interpreted as evidence that the perceptual anomaly elicited differential reaching behavior between pictures of possible versus impossible objects. Infants were selected from a public database of new parents and were recruited by letters

and telephone calls. The final sample consisted of 14 9-month-old infants (M age = 283 days, SD = 19.0; 7 boys, 7 girls). An additional four infants were observed but not included in the sample due to lack of attention or excessive fussiness. All infants were full-term with no known developmental difficulties. The visual displays are shown in Figure 1. Each display was constructed by mounting a high-resolution color printout (measuring approximately 13 cm × 13 cm) onto white foam core board that measured approximately 21 cm × 28 cm. Velcro adhesive tape on the back of the board was used to secure each display to the tabletop in front of the infant in an effort to discourage the infants from trying to pick up the board. The stimulus displays of primary interest were the realistic color photograph of a structurally possible wooden cube and that of an impossible cube. The image of the impossible wooden cube was created in Photoshop® (Adobe Systems, Inc., San Francisco, CA) by altering the local depth relations in a single overlapping bar junction. The color photograph displays of possible and impossible cubes were used previously in a visual discrimination task with 4-month-olds (Shuwairi et al., 2007).