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)…

Three experiments explored effects of stimulus and task factors on tendency to categorize according to taxonomic relations when those relations conflict with appearances. When provided with information that constrained categorization, preschoolers and adults reliably based their decisions on taxonomic relations between physically dissimilar items.…

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)

Children, ages 9 to 13 years, made judgments of proportion with a variety of graphical elements in 2 experiments. A characteristic pattern of over- and underestimation was observed; this pattern was also present, but previously unnoticed, in judgments made by adults. (MDM)

Assessed the effect of the amount of physical detail in pictures on the picture recognition memory of 7- and 9-year-olds, young adults, and adults over 68. For each age group, recognition accuracy was significantly higher for pictures presented in the simple rather than the complex form. (PCB)

Examined age-related changes in visual selective attention--ability to resist interference--in children 5 to 12 years old and adults. The interference effect on stimulus evaluation did not discriminate between age groups; however, the interference effect on correct response activation showed a pronounced age-related reduction, suggesting a…

Groups of eight- and ten-year-olds and adults visually searched for the presence of a target letter or number in fields of items that were either of the same or a different category (letter or number) than the target. (JMB)

The production and discrimination of eight basic facial expressions were investigated among 34 preschool children three to five years of age. Children's productions were elicited and videotaped under four different prompting conditions. Children's discrimination of drawings depicting facial expressions, sociometric ratings, and spontaneous…