Working memory is crucial for many higher level cognitive functions, ranging from mental arithmetic to reasoning and problem solving. Likewise, the ability to learn and categorize novel concepts forms an indispensable part of human cognition. However, very little is known about the relationship between working memory and categorization. This…

In 3 studies (N = 188) we tested the hypothesis that children use a perceptual access approach to reason about mental states before they understand beliefs. The perceptual access hypothesis predicts a U-shaped developmental pattern of performance in true belief tasks, in which 3-year-olds who reason about reality should succeed, 4- to 5-year-olds…

WORD PERCEPTION IS DISCUSSED NOT AS A MECHANICAL TOOL BUT AS A THINKING PROCESS. HOW INDIVIDUALS PERCEIVE PRINTED FORMS DEPENDS ON THE STAGE OF DEVELOPMENT OF THEIR READING ABILITIES. THE BEGINNING READER PROCEEDS ON THE BASIS OF WORD FORMS HE RECOGNIZES AS WHOLES. LATER HE USES CONTEXT AND PICTURE CLUES, VERBAL CONTEXT, GENERAL CONFIGURATIONS,…

Older adults are significantly slower than young adults in the naming response in the Stroop Color Word Interference Test. Hypotheses attempting to explain this age-related difference in a perceptual-cognitive task have included orthogenic principle, response-competition, and cautiousness. This study examines whether there are any significant…

Age and condition (either constancy-relevant or variability-relevant) interact, with the youngest group in the constancy-relevant condition performing most poorly on concept identification tasks. (MH)

The results suggested that profoundly retarded children do show habituation and dishabituation to visual stimuli and are actively storing and processing information about their perceptual world. (Author/DLS)

Examined the ability of 1-year olds to remember the location of nonvisible targets. Found that infants were able to associate a nonvisible target with a direct landmark and to code its distance and direction with respect to themselves or the larger framework. Difficulty of coding with indirect landmarks was associated with cognitive complexity and…

This study examined whether 16-month-old walking infants take the material composition of a handrail into account when assessing its effectiveness as a tool to augment balance. Infants were encouraged to cross from one platform to another via bridges of various widths (10, 20, 40cm) with either a wobbly (foam or latex) or a wooden handrail…

The development of elementary school children's graphic representations of the large-scale environment in the context of the development of spatial cognition, especially Piagetian theory, is examined. The nature of children's graphic representations of space is reviewed and examined relative to development of their spatial cognition. (BT)

The hypothesis that overall-similarity relations structure both adults' and children's classifications of heterogeneous objects (objects that differ in a variety of ways) was supported in two experiments. When objects varied simultaneously on many dimensions, adults and children constructed classifications that maximized within-category similarity…

In a task designed to separate perceptual processes from memory, reading-disabled 12-year-olds showed no perceptual deficits as compared to their peers. However, they exhibited major deficiencies in memory skills, appearing to suffer from a basic information-processing deficiency. (Author/CS)

Reviews recent research on information processing and decision making in orienteering. The main cognitive demands investigated were selection of relevant map information for route choice, comparison between map and terrain in map reading and in relocation, and quick awareness of mistakes. Presents a model of map reading based on results. Contains…

Responds to four commentaries on the article by Jones and Smith in this issue. Suggests that the comments derive from the possibility that stable concepts might not exist and from the difficulty of imagining what cognition could be without represented concepts. Discusses traditional approaches to stability and variability, and considers what…