Picture recognition in animals and humans

Task

Nature of pictures

Age

Results

Reference

Discrimination of stimuli
with binocular disparity

Stereogram or simple
picture of a color drawing

Eight weeks

Increased heart rate in the
dishabituation phase

Appel and

Campos [1]

from stimuli without
binocular disparity

Mother’s photograph
recognition

Color slides

Three months

Preference for mother’s
picture

Barrera and

Maurer [2]

Behavioural observations

Colour photographs

Neonates

Hand raising is elicited by a
real ball but not by its
photograph

Bower [6]

Event-related potentials
recorded from babies
watching pictures of their
mother’s face or a
stranger’s face

Two-thirds-size digitized
colour photographs

Six months

ERP shows difference
between observation of the
mother’s face and a
stranger’s face, but looking
time does not

Nelson and de
Haan [71]

Finding a hidden object when
the location is
demonstrated with
photographs

Photographs

Twenty-four and 30 months

Failure to find the hidden
object in 24-month-old
children but not in
30-month-old

Deloache and
Burns [23]

Behavioural observations

Color photographs

Nine months

Trying to grasp the depicted
objects, despite
discriminating between
objects and pictures

Deloache et al.
[25]

Cross-cultural studies of
human picture perception

Black-and-white
photographs and drawings

Adults and children with or
without experience

Same types of difficulty
occur in pictorial and
nonpictorial cultures

Deregowski [28]

Presentation of pictures

Line drawings

Adults without experience

Difficulty recognizing what
a picture represents

Deregowski et
al. [29]

Habituation to a live face,
then measurement of
fixation times for a slide of

Life-size colour slides

Five months

Perception of similarity
between a live person and
their photograph

Dirks and

Gibson [30]

the same and a novel face

Comparison of amount of
reaching to a real ball and
to its picture

Color photographs

Twenty-three days

Similar amount of reaching
with a real ball and with its
picture

Dodwell et al.
[32]

Presentation of pictures

Black-and-white
photographs

Adults without experience

Difficulty recognizing what
a picture represents

Herskovits [41]

Naming the represented
objects

Photographs and line
drawings

Nineteen months without
experience

Correct naming

Hochberg and
Brooks [44]

Detection of an adult’s

Colour digitized pictures

Three months

Correct detection

Hood et al. [46]

change of gaze direction

Intermodal transfer between
oral and visual exploration

Digitized colored or
black-and-white images

Twelve hours

Intermodal transfer occurs

Kaye and
Bower [52]

of objects

Presentation of pictures

Black-and-white
photographs

Adults without experience

Difficulty recognizing what
a picture represents

Kidd [56]

Review of cross-cultural
research

Black-and-white
photographs and drawings

Adults and children with
more or less experience

Difficulty in perception and
recognition of various types
of pictures

Miller [70]

Recording of event-related
potentials

Black-and-white slides

Seven months

Event-related potentials vary
with the expression of the
faces presented

Nelson and de
Haan [71]

Discrimination between 2-D
and 3-D stimuli

Simple black-and-white
silhouettes

Four weeks and 8 weeks

Visual behavior

differentiates between 2-D

Pipp and Haith
[76]