Infants' discrimination of shapes from shading and cast shadows

Shadows are powerful cues in the perception of shapes. We can perceive shading and cast shadow implicitly. We investigated infants' ability to detect a single discrepant figure that was depicted by shading or cast shadow and examined the influence of the contrast polarity of shadows on this process. In Experiment 1, we manipulated the blur direction of a shadow to create stimuli that appeared either to be partially shaded or to cast a shadow and then used a preference to test whether this difference would allow 5- to 8-month-old infants to discriminate the figures that adults were able to perceive as different shapes. Only 7- to-8-month-old infants could differentiate one shading figure from cast shadow figures, and vice versa. In Experiment 2, we reversed the contrast polarity of the figure (dark object with a light shadow) and tested whether discrimination was affected. As has been found with adults, infants exposed to this condition were unable to discriminate the contrast-reversed shading and cast shadow figures. Our results suggested that an age of around 7 months is important for development of the ability to perceive shape differences from shading and cast shadows.