Social precursors to symbolic understanding of pictures were examined with 100 infants ages 6, 9, 12, 15, and 18 months. Adults demonstrated 1 of 2 stances toward pictures and objects (contemplative or manipulative), and then gave items to infants for exploration. For pictures, older infants (12, 15, and 18 months) emulated the adult's actions…

Examines the development of intermodal perception in infancy by means of a new method, the intermodal learning method. Results support the claim that only subjects who had been familiarized with appropriate and synchronous film and soundtrack pairs showed evidence of intermodal learning. (Author/RWB)

Investigated the extent to which 3.5-month-old infants trained in amodal auditory-visual relations between falling objects and the sounds they made could generalize their intermodal knowledge to a new task and across events. Found that infants tested with familiar events and with events of a new color or shape showed learning and transfer…

Four studies examined 10- to 18-month-old infants' ability to detect and encode correlations among features in a motion event. Findings indicated that the youngest infants process static features in an event independently but do not process correlations among dynamic features; the oldest detect correlations between all three features when the…

Three experiments examined whether 8.5-month-olds considered an object's width and compressibility when determining whether it could be inserted into a container. Results suggested that infants realized that large balls could fit into large but not small containers, whereas small balls could fit into both containers. Infants understood that large…

Two studies examined whether infants' category discrimination in an object-examination task was based solely on an ad hoc analysis of perceptual similarities among the experimental stimuli. Findings indicated that 10- to 11-month- olds' responses varied systematically only with the presence of a category change, but not with the degree of…

Examines whether three-month-old infants can detect variations within the single expression category of smiling and whether individual differences in infants' sensitivities are related to identifiable mother or infant behaviors. (HOD)