Investigates the concept of animacy of 9- and 12-month-old infants by exposing them to autonomous motion with animate and inanimate objects in a series of three experiments. Three experiments were carried out. Results indicated that infants discriminate animate from inanimate objects on the basis of motion cues by the age of nine months. (MOK)

Examines preschoolers' understanding of non-observable causal mechanism in causes of illness. Three studies were conducted using subjects from university child care centers. Subjects average five years of age. Results indicated that preschoolers recognize that appearances may be deceiving when it comes to judging causes of illness. Discusses…

A study with three- and five-year olds contrasted two important proposals regarding children's assumptions about word meanings: the taxonomic assumption proposal and the shape bias proposal. Results suggest that perceptual similarity, particularly shape similarity, is very important in early word meaning but that children gradually shift their…

Examined whether spatial classification is discovered during play and if external products of play lead children to use space to represent similarity. Found through two experiments--a longitudinal study of four children's classification behaviors, and the examination of play behavior with two types of objects--that comparison of different kinds…

Two experiments examined the effects of common motion, background texture, and orientation on four-month olds' perception of unity of a partially occluded rod. Results indicated that infants' perception of object unity is not dependent on a single visual cue but on a variety of cues including motion, interposition, depth cues, background texture,…

Examined how children's and adults' initial conceptions of objects and space influence predictions about the physical world, but lead the naive person to misconstrue a dynamic event. Found that participants proficiently anticipated where an oscillating screen would contact a hidden object, but underestimated the distance until contact.…

Three studies investigated infants' and young children's perception of the unity of musical events. Results indicated that properties specific to musical instrument families are relevant for young children's perception of musical events. Specific experience with a variety of instruments is evidently not necessary for detecting correspondences of…

The role of context in categorization was examined in four experiments with three month olds. Findings demonstrated that categorization of a novel object is influenced by the context present when the object is initially encountered and by previous encounters with that object in the category context, indicating that infants are capable of…

Tested children with apparatus that dropped balls through clear or opaque interwoven tubes. Found that older children could solve configurations with greater number of tubes than younger children. Success with clear tubes did not transfer to opaque tubes. Significantly, errors were consistently directed to location directly below ball's last seen…