Explores the dissociation between the performance by children with autism on false belief tasks, on which they do poorly, and false photograph, false map, and false drawing tasks, on which they do well. Suggesting domain specificity in the development of representational system, the results supported the modularity of theory of mind and the…

Premature infants with subependymal or intraventricular hemorrhage took longer to habituate on a habituation task, and scored lower on a measure of mental development, than did other premature infants or full-term infants. Both groups of premature infants were less successful than full-term infants on an object permanence task. (BC)

This article uses a case study of a deaf-blind infant to examine issues in the early cognitive development of such infants. The study used an ecological approach involving naturalistic observation, videotaping, anecdotal accounts, and the use of four global developmental scales. (DB)

Seven infants and toddlers with severe/profound and multiple learning difficulties were presented with a contingency situation which they could control. Increased responses and positive emotional effects, which were reversed when their control was eliminated, suggested that infants with mental ages as young as two months can detect cause and…

Infants who were in darkness were presented with objects that made sounds. Objects were within reach and out of reach. Infants reached into the target area more often when the object was in reach than when the object was beyond reach. Infants reached correctly in the dark for objects placed off midline. (BC)

Responds to Mandler's critique of authors' view of infant categorization. Maintains that their view of infant categorization is not characterized by a shift from one type of category to another but by gradual changes in the kinds of information infants can use in forming categories. Clarifies position regarding a single categorical process using…

Analysis of effects of different starting points on the Bayley Scales of Infant Development II Mental Scale found that starting at the child's chronological age consistently inflated scores, whereas starting at the lowest item set skewed results in the opposite direction. Testing downward until all items are passed and upward until all items are…

Evaluated statistically the effect of intranatal and early postnatal period factors on mental development of very low-birth-weight infants. Covariance structure analysis revealed direct influence of birth weight and gestational age in weeks on mental development at age 1, and of opthalmological aberrations and respirator disorder on mental…

Investigated in 6 experiments how 4.5-month-old infants' perception of a display is affected by an immediate prior experience with an object similar to part of the test display. Found that infants' use of a prior experience is disrupted by changes in the features of the object, but not by change in its spatial orientation. (JPB)

Argues for an informational processing explanation for young infants' ability to use featural cues to differentiate objects, centering on the development of infants' ability to integrate both featural and object information. Considers information processing propositions and evidence on object segregation. (JPB)

Discusses connections between infants' use of object knowledge in recognition to computational, psychophysical, and neurophysiological research on adult perceptual segmentation and grouping. Considers these connections through a framework of the tasks and information involved in adult object segregation, and interprets Needham's results in this…

Discusses responses to Needham's research on infants' use of featural, physical and experiential information to segregate displays. Considers characterization of different kinds of information infants use when segregating objects. Discusses relations between processes underlying object segregation. Considers the roles of visual versus linguistic…

Examines the ability of infants to track and anticipate the final orientation of an object. Subjects were infants ranging from an average of four months to eight months old. Three experiments, with the last one as control, were carried out. Concludes that infants show some rudimentary mental rotation from four months of age. (MOK)

Observational reinforcement was studied in 5- to 13-month-old infants in a contingency learning task where brief light-sound stimulation followed touches on a canister. The task was preceded by differing preexperiences for each of four study groups. Overall, results demonstrated that vicarious reinforcement in the preexperiences probably did not…

Three experiments examined whether 8.5-month-olds considered an object's width and compressibility when determining whether it could be inserted into a container. Results suggested that infants realized that large balls could fit into large but not small containers, whereas small balls could fit into both containers. Infants understood that large…