Object labels are valuable communicative tools because their meanings are shared among the members of a particular linguistic community. The current research was conducted to investigate whether 13-month-old infants appreciate that object labels should not be generalized across individuals who have been shown to speak different languages. Using a…

A current theory of attention posits that several micro-indices of attentional vigilance are dependent on activation of the locus coeruleus, a brainstem nucleus that regulates cortical norepinephrine activity (Aston-Jones et al., 1999). This theory may account for many findings in the infant literature, while highlighting important new areas for…

Early evidence of social referencing was examined in 5 1/2-month-old infants. Infants were habituated to 2 films of moving toys, one toy eliciting a woman's positive emotional expression and the other eliciting a negative expression under conditions of bimodal (audiovisual) or unimodal visual (silent) speech. It was predicted that intersensory…

The speed of a moving object is a critical variable that factors into actions such as crossing a street and catching a ball. However, it is not clear when the ability to discriminate between different speeds develops. Here, we investigated speed discrimination in 6- and 10-month-old infants using a habituation paradigm showing infants events of a…

Background: The use of common psychological assessment tools is invalidated with persons with PIMD. The aim of this study was to test the feasibility of using a visual habituation procedure with a group of adults with PIMD, to develop a new theoretical and practical framework for the assessment of cognitive abilities. Methods: To test the…

Early in life, infants possess an effective face-processing system which becomes specialized according to the faces present in the environment. Infants are also exposed to the voices and sounds of caregivers. Previous studies have found that face-voice associations become progressively more tuned to the types of association most prevalent in the…

Three-dimensional (3D) object completion, the ability to perceive the backs of objects seen from a single viewpoint, emerges at around 6 months of age. Yet, only relatively simple 3D objects have been used in assessing its development. This study examined infants' 3D object completion when presented with more complex stimuli. Infants…

This article takes its point of departure in ethnographic data from what in Sweden is called the Individual Programme (IP). This programme was for upper-secondary school pupils who were not eligible for one of the country's academic or vocational programme. Its main formally expressed goal was to enable students to become eligible for these…

Previous research indicates that monolingual infants have difficulty learning minimal pairs (i.e., words differing by one phoneme) produced by a speaker uncharacteristic of their language environment and that bilinguals might share this difficulty. To clearly reveal infants' underlying phonological representations, we minimized task demands by…

The impact of bullying in all forms on the mental health and safety of adolescents is of particular interest, especially in the wake of new methods of bullying that victimize youths through technology. The current study examined the relationship between victimization from both physical and cyber bullying and adolescent suicidal behavior. Violent…

A growing body of research indicates connections exist between action, perception, and cognition in infants. In this study, associated changes between sitting ability and upright face processing were tested in 111 infants. Using the visual habituation "switch" task (C. H. Cashon & L. B. Cohen, 2004; L. B. Cohen & C. H. Cashon, 2001), holistic…

Two experiments examined infants' ability to form a spatial category when habituated to few (only 2) or many (6) exemplars of a spatial relation. Sixty-four infants of 10 months and 64 infants of 14 months were habituated to dynamic events in which a toy was placed in a consistent spatial relation ("in" or "on") to a referent…

In the world, the manners and paths of motion events take place together, but in language, these features are expressed separately. How do infants learn to process motion events in linguistically appropriate ways? Forty-six English-learning 7- to 9-month-olds were habituated to a motion event in which a character performed both a manner and a…

A fundamental step in learning words is the development of an association between a sound pattern and an element in the environment. Here we explore the nature of this associative ability in 12-month-olds, examining whether it is constrained to privilege particular word forms over others. Forty-eight infants were presented with sets of novel…

In the author's opinion Nietzsche has adopted the three Aristotelian factors, i.e., logic, learning and experience, showing the nihilistic element in the educational system of his days. By means of the term "formal education", Nietzsche implies the education comprises the development of the intellectual faculties of the learner. According to…