Eye tracking offers a powerful research tool for developmental scientists. In this brief article, the author introduces the methodology and issues associated with its applications in developmental research, beginning with an overview of eye movements and eye-tracking technologies, followed by examples of how it is used to study the developing mind…

The cognitive underpinnings of arithmetic calculation in children are noted to involve working memory; however, cognitive processes related to arithmetic calculation and working memory suggest that this relationship is more complex than stated previously. The purpose of this investigation was to examine the relative contributions of processing…

Tested and confirmed, in three experiments, the hypothesis that children's interpretation of pictorial conventions and of the expression "look like" may increase their tendency toward intellectual realism. That is, a tendency to respond to requests for perceptual reports by indicating what is known about an object or array, rather than…

Evaluates infants less than 1 week of age in a habituation-recovery paradigm for evidence of ability to detect an invariant identity or nonidentity relationship between components of a visual stimulus. (Author/NH)

A total of 20 infants either five or seven months of age viewed computer-generated random-lot displays in which accretion and deletion of texture provided the only information for contours. Infants of both age groups showed significant preferences to reach for the apparently nearer regions in the displays. (Author/RH)

Investigates the role active, self-produced movement might play in the type of rotation task typically used to assess spatial orientation in children 12 months to 18 months of age. Results indicated that, at least at 12 months, spatial orientation was indeed facilitated by allowing the infants (n = 13) to move through space on their own. (RH)

Contends that history is a nearly "sense-less" profession because reading is almost the only source of historical understanding. Reviews content related to sensory experiences in college history textbooks. Argues that including language about the senses in historical writing and instruction will enlarge the audience and the field of…

Infants five and seven months of age participated in two studies in which two filmed facial expressions were presented with a single vocal expression characteristic of one of the facial expressions. Seven- , but not five-month-olds, increased their fixation to a facial expression when it was sound-specified. Preferences for a particular expression…

This study examined the effects of speechreading sentence perception across three speaker viewing angles: front view, quarter view, and side view. The performance of a female adult with postlingual hearing loss was measured at each angle. Results indicated that the side view angle was the most effective, though performance at the other angles was…

This preliminary study examined effects of word visibility and prime association factors on visual spoken word recognition in lipreading, using a related/unrelated prime-target paradigm with 20 hearing adults. In related prime-target pairings, more targets with a high than low prime association were identified. In unrelated prime-target pairings,…

Three experiments examined whether limitations in perceptual ability by 24 individuals with mental retardation extended to learning perceptual categories based on elements of actions. Individuals with mental retardation had difficulty identifying some actions, slower decision times for activity identification, and could not identify the actor's…

Study tests 45 four-month-old infants for color constancy using a familiarization, paired-comparison paradigm. Infants tested with a change in illuminant correctly recognized the familiar color under some conditions and failed to do so under others. (Author/RWB)

The sensitivity of 10 moderately mentally retarded and 10 nonretarded adults to changes in environmental spatial structure with and without visual-environmental clues was examined. Both groups showed similar sensitivity to perspective changes without visual cues, but only the nonretarded demonstrated increased accuracy with the visual cues.…

Four experiments investigated three- and four-year-old children's knowledge of projective size-distance and projective shape-orientation relationships. Results indicated that preschool children's understanding of these relationships seems at least partly cognitive rather than wholly perceptive, providing further evidence for the acquisition of…

An exploratory study probed the extent to which children rely on category membership to guide their inferences. A total of 60 children, 4 years of age, were shown 20 sets of pictures of various animals, plants, and minerals. Each set consisted of representations of three objects having two salient features: perceptual similarity/dissimilarity and…