Research in the past decades has investigated the time course of the acquisition of physical knowledge in early development in much detail. However, few is known about the motives that actually lead infants to interact with the objects of their physical world. The research presented here investigated in two experiments if 11-month-old infants'…

This experiment investigated social referencing as a form of discriminative learning in which maternal facial expressions signaled the consequences of the infant's behavior in an ambiguous context. Eleven 4- and 5-month-old infants and their mothers participated in a discrimination-training procedure using an ABAB design. Different consequences…

Two preferential-reaching experiments explored 5- and 7-month-olds' sensitivity to pictorial depth cues. In the first experiment, infants viewed a display in which texture gradients, linear perspective of the surface contours, and relative height in the visual field provided information that two objects were at different distances. Five- and…

In 2 experiments, the interplay of action perception and action production was investigated in 6-month-old infants. In Experiment 1, infants received 2 versions of a means-end task in counterbalanced order. In the action perception version, a preferential looking paradigm in which infants were shown an actor performing means-end behavior with an…

Can infants use interposition and line junction cues to infer three-dimensional (3D) structure? Previous work has shown that in a task that required 4-month-olds to discriminate between static two-dimensional (2D) pictures of possible and impossible cubes, infants exhibited a spontaneous preference for displays of the impossible cube but left open…

The purpose of this research was to assess the infant's abilities to make successive discriminations in the size of a figure. The subjects were 90 10-month-old infants. (Author/MP)

Infants' responses to male and female faces and their preferences for happy versus fearful faces were studied to extend findings indicating that infants at 7 months can generalize discrimination between expressions of happiness and surprise across four different female models' faces. In the first experiment, a paired-comparison procedure was used…

Investigates whether tactual habituation without the assistance of vision occurs in four- to six-month-old infants. Additionally tests the relevance of a habituation/reaction to novelty procedure in the tactual modality. Results show clearly that tactual habituation occurs in such infants, just as visual habituation does. (Author/RH)

In three experiments, the effect of additional "contextual" elements on the discrimination of the orientation of linear and curvilinear segments was investigated with four-month-old infants. Results suggest that, regarding certain stimuli and techniques of measurement, surrounding contextual segments can aid the discrimination of linear…

One- and two-month-old infants were shown schematic drawings of a human face with features arranged (1) naturally, (2) symmetrically but scrambled, and (3) asymmetrically and scrambled. Two-month-olds discriminated among all arangements and preferred the natural arrangement; one-month-olds showed no discrimination or preference. (Author/DB)

Developmental studies of face processing have revealed age-related changes in how infants allocate neurophysiological resources to the face of a caregiver and an unfamiliar adult. We hypothesize that developmental changes in how infants interact with their caregiver are related to the changes in brain response. We studied 6-month-olds because this…

Infants' visual perception of number change was investigated in three studies. These studies focused on infants' perception of events in which the total number of objects in a small group was changed through addition of another object. Involving 60 infants 5 months of age, Study I attempted to determine whether subjects perceived the properties in…

Differences in response of four- to seven-month-old infants to tachistoscopically presented photographs of two human faces suggest infants were able to remember a frequently presented face from trial to trial and discriminate it from a discrepant, infrequently presented face. Findings suggest event-related brain potential (ERP) responses could…

Presented 9-month-old infants with slides of drawings of pigs and rabbits, and tested the relative success of two auditory accompaniments in facilitating subsequent categorization of the slides. Found that infants paid more attention to presentations when they were accompanied by sound (words or tones) rather than musical tones, and paid more…