Results of three experiments confirmed previous findings that in a moving word task, prereaders 3 to 5 years of age judge as if the meaning of a written word changes when it moves from a matching to a nonmatching toy (e.g., when the word ''dog'' moves from a dog to a boat). We explore under what circumstances children make such errors, we identify…

Adults and 6 and 10 year olds performed tasks in which they combined and subtracted parts of visual images to discover new images. Results indicated that adults and children were able to transform a mental image so as to yield another image. (BC)

An operant conditioning technique was used to study visual discrimination of simple patterns by infants aged 6-12 weeks. The appropriate direction of head turning to the patterns was developed and maintained by social reinforcement. Results showed that visual discriminative control of the direction of head turning can be achieved. (WY)

Compares one study in which 5-year-olds and another in which adults quantified random patterns of dots under unlimited exposure duration. Data on operating ranges and rates for subitizing and counting are included. (JMB)

Preschool, third grade and fifth grade children were presented with two choice-reaction time experiments in which probe stimulus quality was manipulated, to measure the effects of probe stimulus degradation at three developmental levels. Results support the hypothesis that children and adults employ similar strategies in preprocessing degraded…

Eye movement and fixation responses of three- to six-year-old children and adults were recorded during a pattern recognition task. The results suggest that visual fixations do not always reflect active attention, and that direct fixations of visual information are clearly not sufficient and may not be necessary for problem solving. (Author/MP)

Reports on four experiments on pattern perception in four-month-old infants. The first experiment examined preference for patterns varying in structure; the second examined encoding patterns from different subset sizes; and the last two experiments examined changes in the size, position, and orientation of the habituation pattern. (HOD)

Incentives produced no discernible effect upon the performance of either of two treatment groups. The data were also analyzed for latency of response, practice effects and reversal errors, none of which was related to reading retardation. (WY)

Investigates whether elementary school children can successfully execute a mental rotation on Marmor's state-comparison task without knowledge of logical sequence relations, whereas such knowledge is required to construct or evaluate external representations of the successive states in a rotation movement. (HOD)

Comparisons of the regression profile and correlations of physical measures with latency for a 5-year-old subject (who performed 1250 trials in a form recognition task) with those for a group of 25 adults indicated that use of form information was highly consistent across age levels. (Author/WY)

Presents results of two experiments which measured contrast sensitivity function in infants. Information concerning development of visual acuity, low frequency attenuation, and sensitivity to contrast were collected. Results provide an approximate picture of and means for detection of infants' pattern information. (Author/DB)

Thirty-six kindergartners were asked to respond to questions and construct figures designed to test their knowledge of hierarchical relations. Subjects had considerable knowledge of subset and superset classification, and could draw transitive inferences with little difficulty; however, they appeared to have little appreciation of the asymmetry…