Infants have shown variable success in quantity comparison tasks, with infants of a given age sometimes successfully discriminating numerical differences at a 2:3 ratio but requiring 1:2 and even 1:4 ratios of change at other times. The current explanations for these variable results include the two-systems proposal--a theoretical framework that…

Behavioral, psychophysiological, and neuropsychological studies have revealed large developmental differences in various learning paradigms where learning from positive and negative feedback is essential. The differences are possibly due to the use of distinct strategies that may be related to spatial working memory and attentional control. In…

One 9-year-old child was taught conditional discriminations between dictated names in Spanish and their corresponding pictures across three stimulus sets while her 10-year-old brother observed. Posttests revealed the emergence of symmetry relations in the form of oral naming skills by both children. (Contains 2 figures.)

Behavioral, neuropsychological, and brain imaging research points to a dedicated system for processing number that is shared across development and across species. This foundational Approximate Number System (ANS) operates over multiple modalities, forming representations of the number of objects, sounds, or events in a scene. This system is…

Though increasing complexity increased the difficulty of discrimination of form, nursery school, kindergarten, and first grade children were all above chance in performance, older children being superior. The results are discussed in relation to developmental perceptual theory. Portions of this paper were presented at the American Psychological…

Research supported by research grant MH-03008 from NIMH, U.S. Public Health Service.

Research supported by University of Massachusetts Faculty Research Grant, National Institute of Mental Health grant MH-03803-06, and National Science Foundation grant GS-386.

Studied developmental changes in optional shift discriminations using kindergartners, second graders, sixth graders, and college students. (DR)

Seven main experiments and three pilot studies were conducted to develop and test theories of transfer of training in children. Initial tests failed to support an incentive model for learning and transfer, but a new model given strong emphasis to the role of context in learning was developed which accounted for a wide range of learning and…

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)

Thirty 4- and 5-year-olds with specific language impairment (SLI) and 30 normally developing peers participated in a discrimination learning-shift paradigm. Both groups were equally successful in extracting regularities from recurring nonverbal stimuli and in making shifts. Findings failed to provide evidence that children with SLI are less able…

Two studies involving 108 infants of 6, 9, and 12 months showed that providing infants with multiple action-relevant properties elicits a rich action repertoire. (RJC)

This study attempted to determine the functional components of rehearsal strategies in children's discrimination learning. When a discrimination list was given without rehearsal instructions, ability to discriminate situational frequencies predicted performance. Without rehearsal strategy, subjects' ability to discriminate between previous usage…