Four experiments used a sensory preconditioning protocol to examine how a dangerous context influences learning about innocuous events. In Experiments 1, 2, and 3, rats were exposed to presentations of a tone followed immediately or 20-sec later by presentations of a light. These tone-light pairings occurred in a context that was either familiar…

Autism is currently one of the most prominent and widely discussed human conditions. Its increased prevalence has intensified the demand for effective educational and therapeutic services, and intervention science is providing mounting evidence about practices that positively impact outcomes. The purpose of this report is to describe a set of…

We explored the amount and timing of temporal synchrony necessary to facilitate prenatal perceptual learning using an animal model, the bobwhite quail. Quail embryos were exposed to various audiovisual combinations of a bobwhite maternal call paired with patterned light during the late stages of prenatal development and were tested postnatally for…

Information presented concurrently and redundantly to 2 or more senses (intersensory redundancy) has been shown to recruit attention and promote perceptual learning of amodal stimulus properties in animal embryos and human infants. This study examined whether the facilitative effect of intersensory redundancy also extends to the domain of memory.…

The impact of 2 types of learning experiences on children's perception of multimodal emotion cues was examined. Children (aged 7-12 years) were presented with conflicting facial and vocal emotions. The effects of familiarity were tested by varying whether emotions were presented by familiar or unfamiliar adults. The salience of particular…

The relation between perceptual organization and categorization processes in 3- and 4-month-olds was explored. The question was whether an invariant part abstracted during category learning could interfere with Gestalt organizational processes. A 2003 study by Quinn and Schyns had reported that an initial category familiarization experience in…

Eye movements of 12-week-old infants were recorded in a visual encoding experiment. Results showed that infants who encoded more slowly scanned less extensively over the stimulus and engaged in prolonged fixation. An experiment with two-week olds showed significant age differences in the manner of visual scanning. (BC)