Sensorimotor difficulties are common in children with autism spectrum disorder, and it has been suggested that motor planning problems underlie their atypical movements. At early school-age, motor planning development typically involves changes in visuomotor integration, a function known to be affected in autism spectrum disorder. However, there…

Aesthetic preferences for overlapping geometrical figures were studied in subjects ages 6 through 14 in the context of the theory of functional pleasure. Results confirmed the hypothesis that the complexity level (number of crossings) of the preferred stimulus varies with the subjects' perceptual capacities, which develop with age. (Author/SJL)

This study used meaningful pictorial material to compare the functions relating complexity to two different response variables (voluntary looking time and preference) in 192 students from grades 1 to 8. Age differences were slight, and results are discussed in terms of theories postulating increases with experience in preference for complexity.…

The primary purpose of this study was to examine whether a general perceptual model developed by Vitz and Todd (1971), capable of dealing with multiple determinants of attending, is useful for understanding infant attending. The model, previously used in research with adults, assumes that perception can be represented as a stochastic sampling…

A study of whether perceptual processes of children can be viewed within a structuralist frame of reference and whether the concept of the group of transformations and related notions can be used to formulate perceptual phenomena and to predict experimental results. (Author/CS)

The effects of age, task, and egocentric responding on visual-spatial perspective taking were studied among 41 preschool children between 3.0 and 5.9 years of age. Children were individually administered three perspective-taking measures: the upside-down/right-side-up task, a block task, and a picture box task, all previously described in the…

Two experiments examined developmental changes in reasoning about intensive quantities--predicting mixture intensity of pairs of liquids with different intensities of red color. Results showed that cognitive averaging in this domain developed late and slowly. Predominating up to 12 years was an extensivity bias, a strong tendency to use rules that…

This experiment compared retarded and normal subjects at different developmental levels on visual (V) and haptic (H) matching tasks. Systematic observations of variables known to have developmentally linked effects on accuracy, including stimulus complexity and haptic exploratory search style, were made. Seventeen mentally retarded subjects, with…