Reminder: CDC seminar on WEDNESDAY

The next talk in the Cognitive Development Center seminar series at the CEU will be given by Zsuzsa Kaldy Associate Professor UMass Boston http://psych.umb.edu/faculty/kaldy/ Title: Apples and oranges: How to solve the problem of visual salience in infant studies Date and time: Wednesday, 11 Nov 2009, 5.00 pm CEU Cognitive Development Center Hattyuhaz, Level 3, Hattyu u. 14., 1015 Budapest Map: http://maps.google.com/maps?q=1015+Budapest,+Budapest,+Hattyu+utca+14,+Hung… Everyone is welcome to attend. Our seminars start on time and we may not be able to let latecomers in. Abstract: What kind of featural information do infants rely on when they are trying to recognize a previously seen object? The question of whether infants use certain features (e .g. shape or color) more than others (e. g. luminance), can only be studied legitimately if visual salience is controlled, since the magnitude of feature values – how noticeable and interesting they are – will affect results. We employed a novel methodology that allowed us to quantify salience changes along shape, luminance and color feature dimensions. We then compared infants’ identification of objects, employing feature changes that were equally salient and found that infants more readily identify objects on the basis of color and shape than luminance. Our method can be easily adapted to different experimental paradigms (for example, visual search) and have the potential to have a considerable impact on the field of infant cognition.