To act and think, children and adults are continually required to ignore irrelevant visual information to focus on task-relevant items. As real-world visual information is organized into structures, we designed a feature visual search task containing 3-level hierarchical stimuli (i.e., local shapes that constituted intermediate shapes that formed…

Reversal and nonreversal shifts in 19 2- to 14-year-old autistic children were studied. Results indicated that the older autistic children did better on reversal shifts than did younger children, who performed better on nonreversal shifts. Findings were consistent with those for normal children. (Author)

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)

This study compared the use of discrete and relational aspects of visual configurations in making similarity judgments. Subjects were 3-, 4-, 5-, and 8-year-old children and adults. (BD)

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…

Children's abilities to judge "who is older" without using size as a cue were studied. Five-year-olds were better able to discriminate age than four-year-olds but were not equal to adults. No significant sex differences were found. (Author/RD)

Subjects from kindergarten-age to adult participated in four experiments. In order to view the stimuli, subjects in three experiments activated lights in viewing boxes; in the fourth experiment, stimulus fixations were measured using a corneal reflection technique. Results supported the view that visual observing is controlled by cognitive…

Preschool children were asked to choose the figure most resembling a real man from three figures drawn according to formulas used by children to depict humans. Results suggest development of drawing systems influences children's conceptions about objects or events. (Author/DB)

A study of 300 children in kindergarten, grade 2, and grade 6 found that background music improved visual discrimination task performance at the youngest and middle ages and had no effect on the oldest participants. On a square identification task, background music had no influence on easy and difficult tasks but lowered performance on…

Pioneering research has shown that infants are capable of perceptual discrimination and has provided some indication of the nature of the discrimination; that is, what stimuli are differentiable. Studies have demonstrated that significant effects exist, in stimulus-pair comparisons, for age of infant, speed of movement of stimulus during…

The research experiments on relational learning in young children contained in this report were guided by two major goals: (1) to examine the extent of conceptual transfer in preschool children, and (2) to explore the relation of both "acquisition" and "transfer" to chronological development. The performance of preschool…

This appendix includes seven papers which focus on various aspects of the learning processes of children ages 5-7: (1) S. Thompson, "Transitions to concrete operations: A survey of Piaget's writings" (in outline form); (2) S. H. White, "Changes in learning processes in the late preschool years," an examination of cross-cultural…