We would like to thank the commentators for their time and thoughtfulness--the commentaries are, in general, engaging and informative. Interestingly, most of the discussion has to do with the nature of representation, not with our basic critique of nativist infant research. Regarding the latter, there seems to be general agreement. Regarding…

Reviews "An Odyssey in Learning and Perception" (E. J. Gibson), a volume of collected works that present a first-hand account of many advances in psychology over the past 60 years. A discussion of the two basic questions that capture the essence of Gibson's research, "What is learned" and "What is information" is…

Investigated children's understanding of meaning of the cognitive verb "know" (as defined by an abstractness and conceptual difficulty hierarchy). Found that knowledge increased with development, and low levels of meaning were mastered before high levels, and more rapidly. Understanding in audio-taped stories was more difficult than in video-taped…

Study reports data on the acquisition of knowledge about astronomy in children from India, and the cosmological models they construct. Found that Indian children's cosmologies honor a variety of implicit assumptions governing the construction of initial cosmological models and that folk models are also incorporated to provide a psychologically…

Four studies examined preschoolers' use of the cue of action initiation to infer another's desired goal. Found that differences in action initiation play an increasingly important role in 3-year-olds' mentalistic explanations of action, and that this development may be related to other critical changes occurring in their developing theory of mind.…

Compared the use of conditional logic in adult-adult and adult-child conversation. Results indicated that conversation patterns and inferences were similar except that children made fewer independent inferences and shifts in taxonomic level and responded more frequently to socially controlling statements than did adults. (AA)