Children (N = 103, 4-9 years, 59 females, 84% White, c. 2019) completed visual processing, visual feature integration (color, luminance, motion), and visual search tasks. Contrast sensitivity and feature search improved with age similarly for luminance and color-defined targets. Incidental feature integration improved more with age for…

The cognitive functioning of children who experience intimate partner violence (IPV) has received less attention than their emotional-behavioral outcomes. Drawing upon data from 615 (48.4% female) 10-year-old Australian-born children and their mothers (9.6% of mothers born in non-English speaking countries) participating in a community-based…

This study explored transactional associations among visuomotor integration, attention, fine motor coordination, and mathematics skills in a diverse sample of one hundred thirty-five 5-year-olds (kindergarteners) and one hundred nineteen 6-year-olds (first graders) in the United States who were followed over the course of 2 school years.…

Researchers examined whether contingent experience using a touch screen increased toddlers' ability to learn a word from video. One hundred and sixteen children (24-36 months) watched an on-screen actress label an object: (a) without interacting, (b) with instructions to touch "anywhere" on the screen, or (c) with instructions to touch a…

In humans, effortful cognitive processing frequently takes place during social interaction, with eye contact being an important component. This study shows that the effect of eye contact on memory for nonsocial information is different in children with typical development than in children with autism, a disorder of social communication. Direct…

This study examined the relation of 3-year core information-processing abilities to lexical growth and development. The core abilities covered four domains--memory, representational competence (cross-modal transfer), processing speed, and attention. Lexical proficiency was assessed at 3 and 13 years with the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT)…

Educators often use concrete objects to help children understand mathematics concepts. However, findings on the effectiveness of concrete objects are mixed. The present study examined how two factors--perceptual richness and established knowledge of the objects--combine to influence children's counting performance. In two experiments, preschoolers…

Attention is construed as multicomponential, but the roles of its distinct subfunctions in shaping the broader developing cognitive landscape are poorly understood. The current study assessed 3- to 6-year-olds (N = 83) to: (a) trace developmental trajectories of attentional processes and their structure in early childhood and (b) measure the…

Eye movements were recorded while sixty-two 1-year-olds, 4-year-olds, and adults watched television. Of interest was the extent to which viewers looked at the same place at the same time as their peers because high similarity across viewers suggests systematic viewing driven by comprehension processes. Similarity of gaze location increased with…

A controversial issue in the field of language development is whether language emergence and growth is dependent solely on processes specifically tied to language or could also depend on basic cognitive processes that affect all aspects of cognitive competence (domain-general processes). The present article examines this issue using a large…

To examine the development of look duration as a function of age and stimulus type, 14- to 52-week-old infants were shown static and dynamic versions of faces, Sesame Street material, and achromatic patterns for 20 s of accumulated looking. Heart rate was recorded during looking and parsed into stimulus orienting, sustained attention, and…

Tested the model which posits that heart-rate deceleration and respiratory sinus arrhythmia are indices of infant attention. Infants studied cross-sectionally at 14, 20, and 26 weeks of age were presented with complex patterns on a TV screen which were accompanied by an "interrupting stumulus". (Author/BN)

First and fifth graders sorted cards into two piles based on the orientation of a T figure. Sorting took place in the presence of irrelevant information which did or did not contrast in line slope with the target, or in the absence of irrelevant information. (Author/JMB)

Results of three experiments suggest that groups of schizophrenic, younger normal, and older normal children used a serial information-processing strategy while performing on a partial report version of a span of apprehension task. Impairment of schizophrenic children on the partial report versions seemed to reflect inefficiencies in the…

Several propositions deduced from the discrepancy hypothesis were tested with four-month-old infants using random shapes in a habituation/discrepancy paradigm. (JMB)