Do infants encode feature and geometry information in a two-dimensional space?

Geometric form perception and its role in reorienting process have been studied extensively in children, but little is known about its early origin in infancy. Here, we present findings of three experiments that used looking-time paradigm to test infants' sensitivity to geometric and feature information in two-dimensional visual display. One-year-old infants participated in spatial search tasks, which were manipulated regarding the display movement (static, visible rotation and invisible rotation) as a degree of disorientation. The results showed that infants were able to create expectation about a hiding location based on the geometry of a rectangle only in the directionally stable search space, whereas they were capable to use feature cues (color) for reorienting even in that condition when the spatial display was rotated and they were allowed to track the display motion. However, infants did not use either geometry or feature properties of 2-D space in an orientation invariant manner. The findings are discussed within the theory of reorientation with respect to the 2-dimensional space.