Four experiments examined 8-month-olds' ability to reason about collections of objects. Findings suggested that infants' expectations about object behavior do not automatically apply to any and all portions of matter within the visual field. The behavior of an entity and infants' prior experience played roles in determining whether infants will…

Recorded reaching and looking preferences and movement kinematics among 5- to 15-month-olds divided into 3 age groups. Found that 5- to 12-month-olds preferred looking first at a large object; 8.5- to 12-month-olds showed preference for reaching to smaller (graspable) objects. Kinematic measures suggested that onset of object-oriented action…

A visual oddball paradigm was used to investigate whether children with high functioning autism had difficulty detecting mutual gaze under experimental conditions. Findings revealed that children with autism were no better at detecting direct gaze than at detecting averted gaze, unlike normal children. Findings suggest that the lack of ability to…

Examined visual search for compound patterns in 6-, 8-, 10-, and 22-year-olds. Found large improvements with age in search rate for long-range targets; search rate for short-range targets was fairly constant across age. This pattern held regardless of ease of perceptual access to target, supporting the hypothesis of different processes involved at…

Investigated 4- and 7-month-olds' perception of transparency, using computer-generated achromatic or color displays depicting a semitransparent box occluding the center of a rod. Found that 4-month-olds indicated perception of transparency in color but not in achromatic displays. Seven-month-olds showed some evidence of transparency perception in…

To examine the relationship between performance on the Frostig Developmental Test of Visual Perception and birth order, 578 first-graders were tested. (Author)

Tested in two studies 4- to 7-year-olds' face recognition by manipulating the faces' configural and featural information. Found that even with only a single 5-second exposure, most children could use configural and featural cues to make identity judgments. Repeated exposure and feedback improved others' performance. Even proficient memories were…

Examined degree to which analytic and holistic modes of processing play a role in children's and adults' categorization of faces. Found a developmental trend from analytic to holistic processing and an effect of face inversion with increasing age. Seven-year-olds processed faces comparably to nonfacial visual stimuli, whereas a growing proportion…

Two studies assessed the gaze following of 12-, 14-, and 18-month-olds. Findings indicated that infants at all ages looked at the adult's target more when the adult turned to the target with open eyes than when the adult turned with closed eyes. Additional evidence suggested that infants were not simply responding to adult head turning, but were…

Investigated 7-year-olds', 9-year-olds', and adults' ability to classify children's and adults' faces by sex using only biological based internal facial structure. Found that participants categorized adult faces by sex at accuracy levels varying from just above chance (7-year-olds) to nearly perfect (adults). All groups were less accurate for…