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)

Examined 18-month olds' intermodal and verbal knowledge about gender. Presented photos of adults or children paired with a female or male voice, or with gender labels. With adult pictures, subjects spent more time looking at pictures with matching voices than at those with mismatched voices. With children's pictures, subjects failed to match faces…

Examined three possible explanations for findings that infants detect textural discrepancies based on individual features more readily than on feature conjunctions. Found that none of the proposed factors could explain 5.5-month-olds' superior processing of featural over conjunction-based textural discrepancies. Findings suggest that in infancy,…

This study investigated whether deafness contributes to enhancement of visual spatial cognition, independent of knowledge of sign language. Comparison of 12 congenitally deaf children not exposed to sign language and 12 matched hearing controls found that the groups did not differ in their performance on visual spatial skills tests. (Author/DB)

Four studies examined the influence of essentialist information such as internal properties and perceptual similarity on 3-, 4-, and 5-year olds' interpretations of labels. Results suggested that children have essentialist beliefs about animals, but not about artifacts, and that these beliefs interact with children's assumptions about word meaning…