Amy Krivoshik is a senior majoring in Psychology. She was awarded a Spring 2018 Independent Grant which she used to conduct research on how we process spatial information under Dr. Stella Lourenco.
My project addresses the question of how it is that we see the world, not as an amorphous blob of visual input, but as organized into objects units. To know where one thing begins and where another ends, we must individuate objects, establishing whether there is one cohesive object, or separate objects, in a scene. Visual cues, including features like color and shape, and particularly spatial cues, such as distance, may be important for individuating objects.
Yet across development, there is a major shift in how children weight these spatial and featural cues. Infants can detect both spatial and featural cues, but exhibit greater weighting of spatial cues compared to features (Ayzenberg, Nag, & Lourenco, 2017). In contrast, preschoolers show the opposite pattern, weighting features above spatial cues. This raises the question of what might account for this developmental shift in object cue weighting from greater spatial weighting in infancy to greater featural weighting in early childhood.
My research project seeks shed light on this developmental shift by examining the possibility that it relates to the kind of cognitive task that children are primarily engaging in. Specifically, infants may weight spatial cues above features because they are engaging in object individuation, whereas preschoolers may weight features above spatial cues because they are engaging in object identification. My project is a behavioral experiment that prompts 3- and 4 year olds to engage in an object individuation task. We are measuring the type of cue, spatial or featural, that preschoolers rely on most to determine the number of objects in a scene. We predict that if spatial cues are more reliable than features for object individuation, then despite their overall tendency of greater featural weighting, preschoolers may actually revert to greater weighting of spatial cues instead of features when engaging in object individuation.
This project is unique in that we developed an original object individuation task for preschoolers. Children are told a story about one and two characters, and are asked to tap displays with either one object or two objects for the characters. On each trial, children are presented with a spatial display that can be individuated by spatial separation, and a feature display that can be individuated by color or shape. The display type that children select indicates the primary cue, spatial or featural, by which they individuate objects. The study is presented as a game, which children enjoy. We are using a touch screen computer that allows children to tap the displays with their fingers.
So far, 34 children of our goal of 40 children have participated in the study. I am doing this research project for my senior honors thesis and am looking forward to defending my thesis in April. Our ultimate goal is for this research to be part of a paper that addresses how children weight different visual cues across development and in different types of cognitive tasks. Overall, being involved in undergraduate research at Emory has been a rewarding experience that I can look back on fondly as I approach graduation. I appreciate working through the Spatial Cognition Lab— many thanks to Vlad Ayzenberg and Dr. Stella Lourenco.
Visit the Undergraduate Research Programs website to learn more about applying for Independent Research Grants.
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