Recent evidence suggests adults and infants selectively attend to features of action, such as how a hand contacts an object. The current research investigated whether this bias stems from infants' processing of the functional consequences of grasps: understanding that different grasps afford different future actions. A habituation paradigm…

To examine the relationship between visual attention in infancy and the stimulus variables of contour and numerosity, 2- and 4-month-olds were placed in three experimental conditions. The results showed that contour and numerosity, acting in tandem, are responsible for the age-complexity shift observed by previous investigators of infant…

Kindergarten children were given a salience-assessment task to determine each child's salience hierarchy for the dimensions of form, color, and position, and each was provided perceptual training with his/her least salient dimension. Training promoted fewer errors in recall in comparison to control group subjects. (RH)

In an evaluation of the relation between dimensional salience and preschoolers' judgments of bigness, 3-year-old children were shown triads of rectangles and asked to select the "big" one. The biggest rectangle in each triad was neither the tallest nor the widest. (JMB)

An investigation of 4-month-old children's attention responses to pattern dimensions and orientations by comparing the duration of an infant's fixation to changes in the orientation and structural arrangement of a previously exposed pattern. (ED)

This paper presents a model of infant visual recognition which proposes that an infant faced with a novel and a previously exposed target responds with one "look" consisting of a chain of 2 covert responses: (1) an attentional observing response to a dimension and (2) a fixation response to a cue. (Author/JMB)

A series of experiments is described whose aim was to define certain of the effective dimensions of stimulation in the newborn's visual environment. (Author/JMB)

Eight sets of paired auditory and visual stimuli were constructed. Each member of the auditory pair was matched by one member of the visual pair (e.g., ascending "tone/up arrow"; descending "tone/down arrow"). Sixty-one infants with a mean age of 11.4 months were presented matching and unmatching stimuli; total fixation time…

In two experiments, forty 26-week-old infants were repeatedly exposed to an object and were then shown an object that was different from the original object in color, shape and/or texture. Results showed that looking and manipulation increased for the novel shape and texture objects and looking increased for the novel color object. (Author/JMB)

A test for sensitivity to binocular disparity and a shape perception test were administered to four-month-olds. Results indicated that disparity-sensitive infants could perceive three-dimensional-object shape from kinetic and binocular depth information. (PCB)

Examines, in two experiments, 5-month-old infants' sensitivity to auditory-visual specification of distance and direction of movement. One experiment presented two films with soundtracks in either a match or mismatch condition; the second showed the two films side-by-side with a single soundtrack appropriate to one. Infants demonstrated visual…

Results indicate that for children in this study's age range orientation is a less salient discriminative cue than either size or color. (Author/MB)

This study investigated infants' differential responding to novel and familiar stimuli after familiarization in a different sensory modality. Results showed that infants gain information about the shape of objects from their oral experience with them and that this information can be transferred to the visual modality. (Author/JMB)

Results reveal a relationship between two previously explored areas of inquiry: orientation errors in copying and preferences for the orientation of nonrealistic shapes. (Author)