Previous research indicates children reason in different ways about horizontal motion and motion in fall. At the same time, their understanding of motion down inclines appears to result from an interaction between horizontal and vertical motion understanding. However, this interaction is still poorly understood. Understanding of speed change may…

An important issue for understanding visual perception in autism concerns whether individuals with this neurodevelopmental disorder possess an advantage in processing local visual information, and if so, what is the nature of this advantage. Perception of movement speed is a visual process that relies on computation of local spatiotemporal signals…

Inhibition of inappropriate responses allows to shape the motor behavior accordingly to the context in which a subject acts and is an essential executive function. Inhibition has been poorly investigated in Down Syndrome (DS) patients. We tested, using a countermanding task, the inhibitory control in a group of DS patients and in a group of…

The term "representational momentum" (RM) refers to the idea that our memory representations for moving objects incorporate information about movement--a fact that can lead us to make errors when judging an object's location (the RM effect). In this study, we explored the RM effect in a sample of children born very prematurely and a sample born at…

Adults have little difficulty perceiving objects as complete despite occlusion, but newborn infants perceive moving partly occluded objects solely in terms of visible surfaces. The developmental mechanisms leading to perceptual completion have never been adequately explained. Here, the authors examine the potential contributions of oculomotor…

Recent research has shown that 2-year-olds fail at a task that ostensibly only requires the ability to understand that solid objects cannot pass through other solid objects. Two experiments were conducted in which 2- and 3-year-olds judged the stopping point of an object as it moved at varying speeds along a path and behind an occluder, stopping…

In individuals with autism or autism-spectrum-disorder (ASD), conflicting results have been reported regarding the processing of biological motion tasks. As biological motion perception and recognition might be related to impaired imitation, gross motor skills and autism specific psychopathology in individuals with ASD, we performed a functional…

Examined whether 6.5- and 5.5-month-old infants believe, like 11-month-old infants, that a moving object's size affects how far a stationary object is displaced in a collision. After a habituation event, tests indicated that the 6.5-month-old infants and 5.5-month-old female infants believed the size of the moving object affected the collision…

Fifteen adolescents with and 15 without mental retardation were compared on their tendency to show the representational momentum effect when viewing a stimulus array that implied motion. Participants with mental retardation showed the representational momentum effects as did the others, although the magnitude of the memory shift was smaller.…

Describes three experiments that examined how children (4- to 11-year-olds) use their knowledge of the attributes of living things to infer whether particular objects are alive. (HOD)

The developing directional preferences in writing and drawing that were observed in subjects between four years of age and adulthood suggest that two semiindependent motor systems are involved in writing: one for rapid and nonfigurative tasks, the other--which occurs later--for precision and symbolic functions. (Author/GT)

Proposes causal field theory as a model of causal reasoning. Suggests that anomaly detection through comparison with natural events triggers causal reasoning. This anomaly is interpreted in terms of agency; therefore, natural phenomena can be understood through an appeal to agency. The mechanism proposed never changes with development, whereas…

This study reconsiders a series of drawing tasks (Goodnow, 1978) in which children have to modify their stereotypical drawing of the human figure to represent a person in movement. Another task, in which children have to differentiate the drawing of a kangaroo from that of a person, is also considered. According to a neo-Piagetian model of drawing…

The papers in this document represent preliminary results of a study which is part of a 3-year project being conducted by the Educational Testing Service in cooperation with the New York City Board of Education, with support from the Carnegie Corporation of New York. This document is divided into seven sections: (1) Introduction, (2)…

This book focuses on the prevention of academic failure through focus on developmental processes (especially development of essential visual skills) within the individual learner. A distinction is made between sight and vision with vision involving the entire person and his/her learning experiences The first chapter examines "The Dynamics of the…