Visual following in Newborns: Role of Figure-Ground Contrast and Configurational Detail

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
Visual pursuit was used in studying the ability of newborn infants to discriminate levels of contrast. Ratings of the degree of eye and head following were made as subjects pursued facial targets which varied in terms of the degree of figure-ground contrast and the degree of contrast internal to the figure as defined by the presence or saliency of facial features. Differential pursuit mirrored the degree of contrast such that the strongest pursuit occurred to stimuli which had clearly discriminable facial detailing in addition to strong figure-ground contrast. These results suggest that the newborn is sensitive not only to large border areas of high contrasting illumination but to finer configurational details of stimuli as well.

This publication has 15 references indexed in Scilit: