Human cognition is founded, in part, on four systems for representing objects, actions, number, and space. It may be based, as well, on a fifth system for representing social partners. Each system has deep roots in human phylogeny and ontogeny, and it guides and shapes the mental lives of adults. Converging research on human infants, non-human…

The current study sought to determine the age at which children first engage in Level 1 visual perspective-taking, in which they understand that the content of what another person sees in a situation may sometimes differ from what they see. An adult entered the room searching for an object. One candidate object was out in the open, whereas another…

Preparation of this paper supported by U.S. Public Health Grant HD-0890, a grant from the Carenegie Corporation, and by U.S. Public Health Grant HD-2680.

Cognitive categories in infants that have relevance for linguistic development were investigated. "Agent" and "recipient," the categories chosen, are relational categories which by definition involve action. This experiment explored infants' (48 males, 14-24 months of age) sensitivity to certain "action parameters" of events. The question of…

The effects of perceptual and cognitive factors on information processing in visual periphery were studied in 5- and 8-year-old children and in adults. Subjects judged either the similarity (Study 1) or identity (Study 2) of geometric forms. (Author/SB)

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)

It was hypothesized that Piaget's argument on behalf of the reorganization of cognitive processes would gain empirical support from a color/form, matching similar objects problem for 52 6-year-olds from a variety of socioeconomic backgrounds. (Author/MS)

A series of six experiments compares young children's competence in attributing absence of knowledge (ignorance) to their competence in attributing a false belief to the other. (HOD)

A study of developmental aspects of selective attention and task-related strategies of attention in 2nd and 6th graders. Age differences were found and interpreted as reflecting the development of flexible as well as selective attention strategies. (DP)

Results are discussed in terms of cognitive growth, the psychoanalytic notion of ambivalence, the role of stimulus context in eliciting laughter or fear, and a possible adaptive, stimulus-maintaining function of laughter. (Authors)

The degree of reality perception of cartoon and human-fantasy televised episodes was measured in four- and five-year-olds. Five-year-olds had a more mature reality perception than four-year-olds. Only five-year-olds had a more mature reality perception of cartoon than of human fantasy episodes. (Author/RD)

Two studies investigated development of infants' visual preferences for the human body shape. Results indicated that 18-month-olds had a reliable preference for scrambled body shapes over typical body shapes in line drawings, while 12- and 15-month-olds did not respond differentially. In condition using photographs, only 18-month-olds had reliable…

Examines the ability to differentiate appearance-reality and Level Two perspective-taking in tactile modality among a total of 92 children aged two-four years in three studies. The results indicate that three-year-olds find tactile appearance-reality and Level Two perspective-taking tasks easier than visual ones. (RJC)

Visual behavior of infants was assessed with multiple discrimination tasks week to week from four to seven months of age. Task to task reliability was low, but attentional averages from week to week were reliable. Generally, infants with shorter fixations showed more novelty preferences, and infants' shift rate improved with age. (SKC)

Visual learning, the capacity to construe meaning from visual images and to create meaningful visual forms, distills complex information and presents information directly. It plays an important role in development of the ability to abstract and decode. (SK)