Infants' perception of faces becomes attuned to the environment during the first year of life. However, the mechanisms that underpin perceptual narrowing for faces are only poorly understood. Considering the developmental similarities seen in perceptual narrowing for faces and speech and the role that statistical learning has been shown to play…

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 =…

During the second year of life, infants develop a preference to attach novel labels to novel objects. This behavior is commonly known as "mutual exclusivity" (Markman, 1989). In an intermodal preferential looking experiment with 19.5- and 22.5-month-olds, stimulus repetition was critical for observing mutual exclusivity. On the first…

Eleven four-year-old children were tested for discrimination of the following word pairs: rope/robe, seat/seed, pick/pig, ice/eyes, and mouse/mouth. All word pairs were found to be discriminable, but performance on seat/seed and mouse/mouth was inferior to that of the other word pairs. (Author)

Experiment conducted to determine the different effects of a mediational method of verbal learning and visual-discrimination verbal learning. (Author/MM)

Presents nine experimental studies investigating auditory and visual discrimination in very young infants. Results are discussed in terms of their implications for understanding habituation, cross-modal stimulation, receptive language development, and individual differences. Appendices include data on visual fixation duration and information on…

A series of easy activities for parents or caregivers to use in guiding the developmental progress of children at the infant, toddler, and preschool levels. (Author)

This paper reports on an experiment designed to collect data on children's perception and use of semantic attributes. Forty-five children ranging in age from 2 years 8 months to 6 years were given a picture test involving judgment of similarities between objects. The test consisted of 47 groups of pictures; each group contained a stimulus or a…

This handbook, written in a conversational tone, is to help the teacher of very young children work effectively with the child who evidences a high risk for a learning disability. Based upon the theories of child development of Gesell, Piaget, and Kephart, this manual attempts to provide prescriptive activities for specific learning problems in…

Reviews research on various physical factors related to learning and reading disabilities, also providing a 58-item bibliography. (VJ)

In this collection, games and activities are included for each of the following areas of prereading skills: language development, articulation improvement, auditory discrimination, visual discrimination, and visual motor skills. A discussion of each activity and directions for its implementation are included as well. (LL)

The research literature suggests that the processes involved in language and cognitive development are similar in nature, especially during the early years. Both require some method for assimilation and accommodation of incoming stimuli, both appear to be continuous and hierarchical in nature, and both require the development and refinement of a…