Two experiments were conducted to examine whether gross perceptual similarity (shape similarity) and basic conceptual similarity (label similarity) are processed by very young children and influence preferences for novel stimuli. The 88 subjects were 12 to 38 months of age. (MP)

This research reexamined the hypothesis that recognition is a developmentally stable component of the memory system. Recognition performance was compared across age groups. Particular attention was paid to the role of response biases and perceptual skills in developmental increases in recognition performance. (Author/DB)

Used event-related potentials to novel and primed upright and inverted faces to examine evidence of repetition priming in 6-month-olds. Found that repeated faces demonstrated greater negativity than novel faces, and upright faces demonstrated greater negativity than inverted faces. Comparisons with adults tested in a similar experiment support the…

An investigation of memory development using nonmetric multidimensional scaling. Judgments of similarities between complex objects were obtained from 5-year-olds and adults under two conditions: (1) when objects were simultaneously present at the time of comparison, and (2) when the objects were not simultaneously present and had to be compared on…

This experiment was designed to determine whether children's inability to discriminate mirror-image oblique lines is a function of encoding in memory the left-right orientation or the degree of slope of an oblique line. (Author/SB)

Subjects aged 8, 10, 12, and 18 years participated in two visual search tasks. (Author/SB)

In three experiments, four and six year olds and adults were examined to determine whether children were more likely than adults to confuse memories from different sources when the sources were highly similar. Findings indicated that children may be especially vulnerable to the effects of source similarity. (SH)

Tested in two studies 4- to 7-year-olds' face recognition by manipulating the faces' configural and featural information. Found that even with only a single 5-second exposure, most children could use configural and featural cues to make identity judgments. Repeated exposure and feedback improved others' performance. Even proficient memories were…

Examines children's understanding of what variables and relations are important in problem structures, and their use of these variables and relations in problem solving. (HOD)

Examined persistence of sensory memory by studying developmental differences in recall of attended and ignored lists of digits for second-graders, fifth-graders, and adults. Found developmental increase in the persistence of memory only for the final item in an ignored list, which is the item for which sensory memory is thought to be the most…

Tested 32 4-year-olds and 32 6-year-olds for free and cued recall following either play-and-remember or sort-and-remember instructions and assessed them for their metamemory of the efficacy of conceptual and perceptual sorting strategies. Younger children recalled more items under sort-and-remember, whereas no recall differences were found for the…

Assesses children's understanding of the impact of length, noise, age, and time on performance of three cognitive activities: memory, communication, and attention. Subjects were 18 preschool children and 18 first graders. (MP)

Examines the development of young children's analysis of spatial patterns--specifically, hierarchical letter and geometric forms. Suggests that although children as young as four years of age demonstrated substantial analytic competence, their ability to integrate the parts of the spatial array to form a coherent whole was weaker and more easily…

Tests seven- , 10- , and 13-year-olds for developmental differences in processes and strategies involved in geometric matrix solution and the relationship between strategy differences and item complexity. (AS)

Discusses changes occurring in two-, four-, and six-month-old infants' visual attention span, through a series of experiments examining their ability to orient to peripheral visual stimuli. The results obtained were consistent with the hypothesis that infants get faster with age in shifting attention to a spatial location. (AA)