Define size constancy, shape constancy, and object identity, and explain how they contribute to infants' perception of objects.
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The images that objects cast on our retina constantly change in size and shape. To perceive objects as stable and unchanging, we must translate these varying retinal images into a single representation. Size constancy-perception of an object's size as the same, despite changes in the size of its retinal image-is evident in the first week of life. Perception of an object's shape as stable, despite changes in the shape projected on the retina, is called shape constancy. Habituation research reveals that it, too, is present within the first week of life, long before babies can actively rotate objects with their hands and view them from different angles. Both size and shape constancy seem to be built-in capacities that assist babies in detecting a coherent world of objects. Yet they provide only a partial picture of young infants' object perception.
At first, infants rely heavily on motion and spatial arrangement to distinguish objects. When researchers strategically use these cues, even newborn babies can bind together separate elements in a visual display and perceive a unified object. For example, they realize that a moving rod whose center is hidden behind a moving rectangular box is a complete rod rather than two rod pieces. Like size and shape constancy, perception of object unity appears to be a built-in property of the human perceptual system.
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