J. Kagan (2008) urges contemporary developmentalists to (a) be cautious when attributing conceptual knowledge to infants based on looking-time performance, (b) constrain their interpretation of infant performance with multiple methodologies, and (c) reconsider the possibility that qualitative development may be the path by which perceptual infants…

To examine the ontogeny of emotional face processing, event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded from adults and 7-month-old infants while viewing pictures of fearful, happy, and neutral faces. Face-sensitive ERPs at occipital-temporal scalp regions differentiated between fearful and neutral/happy faces in both adults (N170 was larger for fear)…

A study of the use of multiple form dimensions in pattern classification by children in Grades 2 and 5, and adults. Reliability of classification, number and saliency of features selected, and accuracy with which they were used all implied continuous development of perceptual skills. (Author/ED)

The classifying behavior of five-year-old children and adults was examined in two studies of restricted classification using triads of stimuli composed of the dimensions of length and density. Results were consistent with the notion of separable perception for adults and integral perception for children. (Author/SS)

An examination of the extent to which adults and children (7 and 11 years old) were able to make discriminations between fixations directed at their eyes and at different positions on their faces. (SDH)

Reports the results of structured interviews with mothers of 29 children three and one-half to 12 years of age, documenting the development of four categories of food rejection based on distaste, danger, disgust, and inappropriateness. Suggests that lack of contamination sensitivity in younger children is due to their belief that chemical…

Investigates preperceptual auditory storage among eight 9-week-old infants in three experiments using a modification of an adult masking paradigm and a nonnutritive sucking discrimination procedure. Results suggest that echoic storage contributes to auditory perception in infancy and, for infants compared to adults, echoic traces have a longer…

Examines how reference points for the categorical interpretation of high and low (adjectives) were defined by three- to five-year-old children and adults. Shows categorical interpretations of relative terms to be complex dependent. (HOD)

Examined whether children differentiate or confuse the domains of folk biology and folk psychology. Children and adult subjects were asked whether the animals depicted in pictures possessed certain biological and psychological properties. Results indicated that by kindergarten, notions of folk psychology and folk biology are sufficiently…

Six experiments assessed young children's spatial orientation relative to their imagined surroundings. The experiments found that children as young as 3.5 years were able, like adults, to accurately walk along a path that replicated the route between their seat and the teacher's desk in their preschool classroom. (MDM)

Examined degree to which analytic and holistic modes of processing play a role in children's and adults' categorization of faces. Found a developmental trend from analytic to holistic processing and an effect of face inversion with increasing age. Seven-year-olds processed faces comparably to nonfacial visual stimuli, whereas a growing proportion…

Examines whether kindergarteners, second-graders, fourth-graders, and adults can extract relative weight information from observing collisions and lifting events, and if they can judge whether or not collisions are momentum-conserving. Subjects saw either videotapes of events or sequences of static images; younger children appeared to be…