Studies the relationship between timing of puberty and spatial ability in 53 undergraduate women. Results do not show evidence for greater spatial ability on the part of those who have late maturation. (RJC)

Reported are research findings that (1) illustrate the importance of primary spatial orientation for children's and adults' use of symbolic spatial skills and (2) indicate the importance of the distinction between primary and secondary spatial orientation. At least two major ways exist in which humans gather and use spatial information. The…

A 2-part investigation was conducted to examine the ways children resolve the inherent ambiguity of spatial descriptions in terms of cues indicated by the three constituents of spatial propositions: predicate, referent, and relatum. In the first study, it was hypothesized that certain objects, structural markers, and definite articles accompanying…

Tested the hypothesis that some attempts to reduce the performance demands of concrete Piagetian operational tasks may have allowed children to solve those tasks with preoperational functions. Administered two previously used versions of the transitivity task for length and weight to 120 children six- to nine-years-old. The second version was…

Examines the ability of 140 children of 3-5 years to use functional standards to judge size. The ability to use nonegocentric functional standards was present by age 3. However, 3-year-olds performed above chance only when their attention was directed to the relevant function. (RJC)

Two studies examined four- and five-month-old infants' behaviors of leaning forward toward, and reaching for, an object placed within or beyond their reach. Infants who did not lean forward showed a decline in reaching behavior when the object was placed beyond their reach. (MDM)

Comparison of 2 totally blind, 2 visually impaired, and 9 normally sighted children (ages 5-8) on tasks of visual perspective taking found that the totally blind children were older than the other children when they mastered the tasks, made the highest percentage of errors before mastery, and made different errors. (Author/DB)

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)

Two experiments found that (1) by age 8 months infants perceived that leaning extends their effective reaching space to grasp objects; (2) by 10 months they perceived the effective limits of leaning and reaching; and (3) by 12 months they began to perceive how this space may be extended by a mechanical aid. (MDM)

Defines spatial structuring as the mental operation of constructing an organization or form for an object/set of objects. Examines in detail students' structuring and enumeration of two-dimensional rectangular arrays of squares. Concludes that many students do not see row-by-column structure. Describes various levels of sophistication in students'…

Adults readily detect changes in face patterns brought about by the inversion of eyes and mouth when the faces are viewed upright but not when they are viewed upside down. Research suggests that this illusion (the Thatcher illusion) is caused by the interfering effects of face inversion on the processing of second-order relational information…

Del Giacco Art Therapy is a cognitive art therapy process that focuses on stimulating the mental sensory systems and working to stabilize the nervous system and create new neural connections in the brain. This system was created by Maureen Del Giacco, Phd. after recovering from her own traumatic brain injury and is based on extensive research of…

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…

To identify the role of the child's own action in the development of the ability to coordinate perspectives, a spatial localization task was presented to 2 groups of children: 16 children between 18 and 24 months old, and 16 children between 42 and 48 months old. A reward was hidden randomly in one of two identical left-right locations on a…

An experiment was conducted to test the hypothesis (derived from Piaget's theory of cognitive development) that the structure of children's drawings and play-constructions, being expressions of the same underlying function, should be similar. Two groups of 4- and 6-year-old nursery school children were given a testing task consisting of an orally…