Familiarized 6- and 8-month-olds with speech sounds from a phonetic continuum, exhibiting a bimodal or unimodal frequency distribution. Found that only infants in the bimodal condition discriminated tokens from the endpoints of the continuum. Results demonstrate that infants are sensitive to the statistical distribution of speech sounds in the…

BOTH COGNITIVELY-ORIENTED AND RESPONSE-ORIENTED THEORIES OF PERCEPTUAL LEARNING ARE DISCUSSED AND CONTRASTED WITH A STIMULUS-ORIENTED THEORY. PERCEPTUAL LEARNING IS DEFINED AS AN INCREASE IN SPECIFICITY OF DISCRIMINATION OF THE STIMULUS INPUT. THE AUTHOR DESCRIBED WHAT IS LEARNED IN PERCEPUTAL LEARNING AS () THE DISTINCTIVE FEATURES OF THINGS, (2)…

Author stresses the importance of art, music, and literature experiences in the perceptual development of a child. (GB)

Age and condition (either constancy-relevant or variability-relevant) interact, with the youngest group in the constancy-relevant condition performing most poorly on concept identification tasks. (MH)

The purpose of this study was to determine if children given spatial relationship training had learned a definition and/or conceptualization of "in front" which was limited to two distinctly different classes of objects functioning in a specific relationship. Twenty-one children who had completed the "in front" training were given three sets of…

Competence in action perception seems to be achieved very early in life. Because research has indicated that competent perceivers of action must be able to discriminate breakpoints in behavior, then recognition memory for breakpoints should be superior to that for nonbreakpoints at all ages where competence in action perception exists. Two studies…

The discrimination of minimally paired speech sounds by seven severely retarded children (mean age 3.2 years, and mean IQ 38.4) was compared with the discrimination performance of eight normally developing 7-month-old infants. (Author/PHR)

Studies the effects of perceptual salience on performance in problems requiring the coordination of information. Subjects were groups of children, younger adults, and older adults. For each of the age groups, those problems containing the most salient information were solved faster and more accurately than problems containing the least salient…

Reports the results of two experiments dealing with children's visual and tactual performance. In the first task, after several presentations of a series, the tactual group made almost errorless discriminations. But with memory demands, tactual performance became poorer than visual performance. Found a large developmental difference. (JAC)

This guide provides group activities for teachers to aid in planning a multicultural curriculum for developing sensory perception in children. The guide emphasizes the cognitive processes involved in sorting out sensory data and the use of multicultural materials as resources for sensory experience. Activities are presented in six sections.…

Examines the relationship of grade level to children's ability to make musical discriminations when elements are presented simultaneously. Utilized a brief instructional period, listening tests, and singing tasks. Results indicated significant differences between grade level, types of discrimination, and musical interactions. Includes statistical…

Examines the relationship between vocal pitch accuracy and gender, grade level, and the presence or absence of an accompanying unison voice. Reveals no significant differences between unison or individual singing or for gender. Fourth and fifth graders exhibited significant differences. (MJP)