All theories of language development suggest that learning is constrained. However, theories differ on whether these constraints arise from language-specific processes or have domain-general origins such as the characteristics of human perception and information processing. The current experiments explored constraints on statistical learning of…

Connections between adolescents' social information processing (SIP), moral reasoning, and emotion attributions and their reactive and proactive aggressive tendencies were assessed. One hundred mostly African American and Latino 13- to 18-year-olds from a low-socioeconomic-status (SES) urban community and their high school teachers participated.…

The effects of 3 weeks of social (control), postural, or object-oriented experiences on 9- to 21-week-old infants' (N = 42) reaching, exploration, and means-end behaviors were assessed. Coders recorded object contacts, mouthing, fingering, attention, and affect from video. Postural and object-oriented experiences advanced reaching, haptic…

This study provides experimental evidence for automatic, relationship-specific social information processing in 13-year-old adolescents. Photographs of participants' liked, disliked, and unknown peers were used as primes in an affective priming task with happy and angry facial expression probes and in a hypothetical vignette task. For the…

Measures of visual information processing in dyslexic and normal children were compared. Significant differences were found between dyslexics and normals at early stages of visual information processing. (ST)

Thirty elementary school students were assigned to one of three experimental conditions, (labeling, imagery, or control) in a pattern reproduction task. (ST)

The ability of 31- to 36-month-old children to act in accordance with rules was assessed in 2 slightly different experiments using sorting tasks and knowledge tasks. Taken together, the results of both experiments imply a relatively rapid, age-related change culminating in the ability to systematically execute rules that require access to extant…

The Arsenio and Lemerise (this issue) proposal integrating social information processing (SIP) and domain theory to study children's aggression is evaluated from a domain theory perspective. Basic tenets of domain theory rendering it compatible with SIP are discussed as well as points of divergence. Focus is directed to the proposition that…

The present study was designed to identify sources of information in the human face and to determine how this information is processed by young children in solving problems. (ST)

Social information processing theory has been posited as a description of how mental operations affect behavioral responding in social situations. Arsenio and Lemerise (this issue) proposed that consideration of concepts and methods from moral domain models could enhance this description. This paper agrees with their proposition, although it…

Social information processing and moral domain theories have developed in relative isolation from each other despite their common focus on intentional harm and victimization, and mutual emphasis on social cognitive processes in explaining aggressive, morally relevant behaviors. This article presents a selective summary of these literatures with…

This study examined a category-induction'' manipulation which focused the attention of 40 preschoolers on categories through discussion and through spatial arrangement of items. This manipulation induced children's use of category questions. (ST)

Results were interpreted in terms of current conceptions of age differences in information-processing speed. (Author)

Reports an attempt to test two interpretations of immanent justice responses as causal attributions rather than as moral judgments. Finds older children use causal chains to explain contiguity between misdeed and adversity. Data were interpreted as consistent with an information-processing model of immanent justice responses. (RMH)

Investigates performance of 8, 10, 12 year olds and adults on cognitive tasks in terms of several processing-speed measures, each of which may change independently with age. Results underscore the complexity of developmental change in processing efficiency. (Author/RH)