Children have a difficult time in generalizing among changes in background context. We examined the role of two processes that may aid in generalizing category labels in new contexts. In this study, 2-year-old children were taught novel object categories in one type of contextual condition and were tested for category generalization in a new…

What is the role of linguistic labels in inductive generalization? According to one approach labels denote categories and differ from object features, whereas according to another approach labels start out as features and may become category markers in the course of development. This issue was addressed in four experiments with 4- and 5-year-olds…

To test general and specific processes of symbol learning, 4- and 5-year-old children learned three kinds of abstract associates for novel objects: words, facts, and pictograms. To test fast mapping (i.e., one-trial learning) and subsequent learning, comprehension was tested after each of four exposures. Production was also tested, as was…

One critical aspect of learning is the ability to apply learned knowledge to new situations. This ability to transfer is often limited, and its development is not well understood. The current research investigated the development of transfer between 8 and 16 months of age. In Experiment 1, 8- and 16-month-olds (who were established to have a…

The practice of learning from multiple instances seems to allow children to learn about relational structure. The experiments reported here focused on two issues regarding relational learning from multiple instances: (a) what kind of perceptual situations foster such learning and (b) how particular object properties, such as complexity and…

In this study, 2.5-, 3-, and 4-year-olds (N=108) participated in a novel noun generalization task in which background context was manipulated. During the learning phase of each trial, children were presented with exemplars in one or multiple background contexts. At the test, children were asked to generalize to a novel exemplar in either the same…

Developmental studies have provided mixed evidence with regard to the question of whether children consider sample size and sample diversity in their inductive generalizations. Results from four experiments with 105 undergraduates, 105 school-age children (M = 7.2 years), and 105 preschoolers (M = 4.9 years) showed that preschoolers made a higher…

Although the relationship between "mere exposure" and attitude enhancement is well established in the adult domain, there has been little similar work with children. This article examines whether toddlers' visual attention toward pictures of foods can be enhanced by repeated visual exposure to pictures of foods in a parent-administered picture…

When given the opportunity to take notes in memory tasks, children sometimes make notes that are not useful. The current study examined the role that task constraints might play in the production of nonmnemonic notes. In Experiment 1, children played one easy and one difficult memory game twice, once with the opportunity to make notes and once…

This experiment investigated the effect of the short-term retention of duration on temporal discrimination in 5- and 8-year-olds, as well as in adults, by using an episodic temporal generalization task. In each age group, the participants' task was to compare two successive durations (a standard and a comparison duration) separated by a retention…

Two studies examined the impact of temporal synchrony on infants' learning of and memory for sight-sound pairs. Findings indicated that 7-month-olds had no difficulty learning auditory-visual pairs regardless of temporal synchrony, remembering them 10 minutes later and 1 week later. Three-month-olds showed poorer learning in no-synchrony than in…

Trained preschoolers and adults on three sets of successive discriminations with stimuli labeled A, B, and R. Tested for derived stimulus-response relations and stimulus-stimulus relations. Adults displayed class-consistent B-R and A-B performances over all conditions. Children's display of class-consistent B-R performance varied by training…

Explored how 5.5- to 9-year-olds generalize to novel items a new phoneme spelling. Found they were more likely to use novel grapheme when the vowel appeared in the middle of a target; they were not more likely to use novel grapheme when it shared vowel and final consonant of the target than when it shared initial consonant and vowel. (Author/KB)

The effectiveness of training a semantic integration strategy for recall of pictograph sequences and the generalization of the strategy to a related oral sentence task were examined in 60 kindergarten prereaders. (Author/MP)

Investigated whether (1) a highly discriminable treatment procedure in one setting would produce a behavioral contrast effect in unmanipulated settings, and whether (2) such contrast-like trends could be eliminated if initially different reinforcement procedures in two settings were subsequently made similar. (Author/DB)