The present studies examined the role of linguistic experience in directing English and Mandarin learners' attention to aspects of a visual scene. Specifically, they asked whether young language learners in these 2 cultures attend to differential aspects of a word-learning situation. Two groups of English and Mandarin learners, 6-8-month-olds (n =…

For adults, verbal reminders provide a powerful key to unlock our memories. For example, a simple question, such as "Do you remember your wedding day?" can reactivate rich memories of the past, allowing us to recall experiences that may have occurred days, weeks, and even decades earlier. The ability to use another person's language to…

This study investigated novel word acquisition by 18- and 24-month-old children in the context of adult referential behavior independent of variations in salience. Findings suggest that 24-month olds use referential intent of the speaker to learn new words, but when learning, they may have a less secure grasp on the meaning of speakers'…

In a classification task, preschoolers matched a target stimulus with a conventional category, a visually similar item that cut across conventional categories, or an unrelated item. Items were presented in picture, verbal, and picture-verbal conditions. In all conditions, conventional classifications outnumbered visual ones, and this difference…

Neonates who were exposed to the same or different words on two consecutive days habituated to the sound on day one and recovered head turning on day two. Infants who heard the same word again on day two responded less well than infants exposed to the word for the first time on day two. (BC)

Demonstrates young children's shift toward a taxonomic basis for organization of both named and depicted objects. Concludes that perceptual organization in young children cannot be attributed to an inability to ignore visual information but seems to be based upon the centrality of perceptual features to the representation of objects. (Author/NH)

This demonstration of release from proactive interference with young children confirms the suggestion that the technique is appropriate for the study of developmental changes in the encoding of information. (Authors/CB)

Children performed well on tasks involving pictures regardless of whether the pictures were named. Performance on atypical pictures was better when category labels were provided than when labels were not provided. A control study demonstrated that children ignored labels when they named a transient, as opposed to a stable, category. (RH)

Discusses two experiments in which middle-aged, elderly, professional, and non-professional males and females were given the Conceptual Styles Test. An analysis of variance on the percentage of complementary responses revealed significant effects for age, occupation, and th interaction between age and sex. (ED)

Investigates (1) whether the semantic processing deficit in the aged can be attributed to age differences in attentional capacity usage during encoding and (2) age differences in terms of the interaction between encoding and retrieval operations. Subjects engaged in both primary (semantic, rhyme, arithmetic questions) and secondary…

Investigates hemispheric asymmetries in children for processing auditory material which varies in emotional intonation or verbal content. Children in kindergarten, fourth, and eighth grades reported on the emotional and verbal content of dichotically presented sentences. Findings indicate that the right hemisphere is specialized for mediating…

Examines evidence for the automatic processing of information about presentation modality in older adults. Younger and older adults learned a list of nouns through auditory and visual presentation modes, recalled target words, and identified the presentation modality of each word. Results suggested automatic processing for modality memory and some…