Occulsion Study

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For many years, psychologists have wondered how infants come to perceive the objects, actions, and events in the world around them. Do infants realize that when a person walks out of a room they still continue to exist? Do infants know that a person standing behind a tree is not, in fact, two half people? And if so, how do they come to realize that the two halves are part of a larger whole?
     Gestalt psychologists long ago suggested one solution to this problem: a principle of common fate. That is, a fundamental way in which infants view the world is that they assume that visual stimuli that have a common motion are actually part of the same object. Another possibility is that infants know that certain kinds of disappearances, such as the kind seen when a person walks behind an object, are not permanent.
     Whatever the explanation, however, an additional question is to what cues infants are paying attention as a person becomes occluded by another object? The above display demonstrates that many cues are necessary to decide appropriate and inappropriate occlusion. Notice that the occuder does line up with a number of edges. Still, adults, and perhaps young infants, see something profoundly wrong with this display.

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