The present study examined infants’ capability of extracting object unity
in a stationary twodimensional rod-and-box display. The infants were habituated to a
centre-occluded rod and were afterwards tested with both a broken rod and a complete
rod. The looking pattern of both female and male participants aged 8 months did not
reveal the ability to amodally complete the partly hidden rod. Nine-month-old
females, however, looked reliably longer at the broken test stimulus than at the
solid test display, implying that they had perceived the partially occluded rod
presented in the habituation period as a connected whole. Their male counterparts,
on the other hand, did not differentiate between the test patterns. These findings
suggest that the capability of perceiving object unity in displays in which the
relative depth ordering of surfaces is specified solely by the pictorial depth cue
of interposition emerges after about 8 months of age. Furthermore, the results argue
for a differential perspective including sex as a moderator variable.
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