What Goes with What? Development of Perceptual Grouping in Infancy

Pattern perception and organization provide the representations that form the basic processing units in the visual cognition system of adults. This chapter will highlight a line of research investigating the origins and development of such perceptual organization abilities in infants. In particular, the chapter will describe the major theoretical positions on the development of perceptual unit formation and review empirical findings on the operation of a variety of organizational principles that become functional during the first months of life. The results demonstrate that a variety of grouping principles are available for use by infants, although different principles may become functional over different time courses of development, may be governed by different developmental determinants (i.e., maturation vs experience), and not all principles are readily deployed in the manner originally proposed by Gestalt psychologists. The findings also suggest that the principles can yield processing units of an abstract nature and that the operation of the principles can be modulated by top-down influences.