In a study of second graders, results supported the hypothesis that recognition memory would be disrupted when children's attention control strategy required the same cognitive operations as the task material to be studied. (Author/MP)

Three experiments examined whether the phenomena of visual search for single characters (Sternberg, 1966) generalizes to word and word-category search when target and distractor sets had varied and consistent mappings across trials. Previous results were replicated. Four principles of search are discussed within a theory of automatic/control…

A model of context effects in perception is applied to perception of letters. Perception results from excitatory and inhibitory interactions of detectors for visual features, letters, and words. The model produces facilitation for letters in pronounceable pseudowords as well as words and accounts for rule-governed performance without any rules.…

The hypothesis that overall-similarity relations structure both adults' and children's classifications of heterogeneous objects (objects that differ in a variety of ways) was supported in two experiments. When objects varied simultaneously on many dimensions, adults and children constructed classifications that maximized within-category similarity…

Effects of target-noise similarity on the ability to discriminate between two target letters were investigated. Performance was low when the noise letter shared the same name as the target. Thus, interletter interference effects cannot be explained in terms of inhibition between visual features. A "cognitive masking" hypothesis is proposed.…

A new model is proposed for explaining children's performance on Pascual-Leone's test of M-space. The new model is used to generate theoretical performance curves for children at four different age levels and seven different levels of stimulus complexity, and it is a viable alternative. Differences between the models are reviewed. (Author/RD)

Full-term middle-class, full-term lower-class, and preterm infants were compared on cross-modal and visual intramodal functioning in order to determine whether cross-modal functioning would be impaired in infants born prematurely, or in full-term infants who were being raised in less advantaged environments. (MP)

Examines the duration of visual persistence and the relative processing rate in poor and normal readers. Subjects were 48 males aged 7 to 13 years. (MP)

A study involving elementary school students in three age groups examined two explanations for the finding that young children tend to classify objects according to similarity relations, whereas adults emphasize dimensional structure. Results countered the view that children perceive objects according to a more primitive holistic structure. (RH)

Three experiments used a visual fixation technique to examine whether toddlers interpret speech continuously. Found that 24-month-olds had delayed responses when a competing distractor picture's label overlapped phonetically with the target at onset, but not when the pictures' labels rhymed, showing that children monitored speech stream…

Three experiments examined the hypothesis that individual differences in look-duration during infancy covary with different modes of visual intake and encoding, with longer look-durations reflecting encoding based on prolonged inspection of local visual properties, and briefer durations reflecting encoding based on a global, or global-to-local…

Traced developmental changes in automatic and intentional processing of Arabic numerals using numerical-Stroop paradigm in two studies. In numerical comparison task, found that congruent physical sizes facilitated and incongruent sizes interfered with numerical comparison at all ages relative to neutral control. In physical comparison task, found…

A study investigated whether 32 adolescents with reading disabilities (RD) were slower at processing visual information compared to children of comparable age and reading level, or whether their deficit was specific to the written word. Adolescents with RD demonstrated difficulties in processing rapidly presented verbal and nonverbal visual…

Here, we demonstrate that action video game play enhances subjects' ability in two tasks thought to indicate the number of items that can be apprehended. Using an enumeration task, in which participants have to determine the number of quickly flashed squares, accuracy measures showed a near ceiling performance for low numerosities and a sharp drop…