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…

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…

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…

Two studies investigated differences in the comprehension and production of words in 2-year-old children and adults. Study 1 compared children's speaking and understanding of the names of 12 novel objects presented over three weekly sessions. Study 2 tested adults' performance under similar training and testing conditions over two sessions. The…

This study examined the strategic use of questions to solve problems across early childhood. Participants (N = 54, 4-, 5-, and 6-year-olds) engaged in two tasks: a novel problem-solving question task that required asking questions to an informant to determine which card in an array was located in a box and a cognitive flexibility task that…

Human infants have an enormous amount to learn from others to become full-fledged members of their culture. Thus, it is important that they learn from reliable, rather than unreliable, models. In two experiments, we investigated whether 14-month-olds (a) imitate instrumental actions and (b) adopt the individual preferences of a model differently…

What is the source of the "mutual exclusivity" bias whereby infants map novel labels onto novel objects? In an intermodal preferential looking task, we found that novel labels support 10-month-olds' attention to a novel object over a familiar object. In contrast, familiar labels and a neutral phrase gradually reduced attention to a novel object.…

We examined the role of the comparison process and shared names on preschoolers' categorization of novel objects. In our studies, 4-year-olds were presented with novel object sets consisting of either one or two standards and two test objects: a shape match and a texture match. When children were presented with one standard, they extended the…

Learning a new word consists of two primary tasks that have often been conflated into a single process: "referent selection", in which a child must determine the correct referent of a novel label, and "referent retention", which is the ability to store this newly formed label-object mapping in memory for later use. In addition,…

This study investigated infants' rapid learning of two novel words using a preferential looking measure compared with a preferential reaching measure. In Experiment 1, 21 13-month-olds and 20 17-month-olds were given 12 novel label exposures (6 per trial) for each of two novel objects. Next, in the label comprehension tests, infants were shown…

Children as young as 24 months were able to recall accurate information about a series of unusual events after a 3-month delay. Recall of the events after a relatively brief interval appeared to act as a deterrent against forgetting over a longer interval. (RH)

Infants were habituated to reversible and nonreversible pictures of faces. The reversible picture depicted a different face when inverted 180 degrees. For the reversible picture, the infants devoted more visual attention to the inverted picture than to the original picture. (BC)

Infants were familiarized with geometric forms and were then tested with a novel form paired with the familiar one. Compared to infants who had longer looks at the display, those who had shorter looks demonstrated more broadly distributed looks, showed more looks and shifts, and inspected more stimulus areas; and their shifts included more…

In 5 experiments, 10 month olds were habituated to exemplars of a form category and tested for categorization in paired-comparison trials involving in-category versus out-of-category stimuli. Results suggest infants' internal representation for category will not include stimulus dimension not varied in exemplars from which the category was…

Forty retarded children, a Low Mental Age (MA) Group (mean MA 3-3 years) and a High MA Group (mean MA 5-7 years) were trained on 120 different two-choice visual discrimination problems. Initial performance differences were interpreted as a differential preference for novel and familiar stimuli. (JH)