Object recognition and object segregation in infancy: historical perspective, theoretical significance, "kinds" of knowledge, and relation to object categorization

Needham (2001, this issue) reports that 4.5-month-old infants can use a short-term familiarization experience with a single object to facilitate the segregation of a visual display consisting of a configurally similar object and a configurally dissimilar adjacent object. We reflect on this finding in the larger context of Needham's systematic research on the development of object perception, a program that has included (1) a series of empirical studies designed to identify the different cues that infants use for object segregation and (2) a theoretical framework in which infants are presumed to integrate these cues to form interpretations of complex visual displays.