Perceptual Completion in Newborn Human Infants.

Despite decades of studies of human infants, a still open question concerns the role of visual experience in the development of the ability to perceive complete shapes over partial occlusion. Previous studies show that newborns fail tomanifest this ability, either because they lack the visual experience required for perceptual completion or because they fail to detect the pattern of motion. To distinguish these possibilities, newborns’ perception of a center-occluded object was tested, using stroboscopic motion. Infants (mean age of 72 hr) perceived the object as a connected unit, providing the first evidence that the newborn is capable of filling in gaps in the visible surface layout when the relevant visual information can be detected by his or her immature visual system.