Tested the recognition memory of 4-, 6-, 9-, and 12-month-old infants using visual paired comparison tasks. Found that at even the youngest age that reaching was tested (6 months), infants showed evidence of recognition memory on the reaching task at delays at least as long as those at which they demonstrated recognition memory on the looking…

In later life, I. P. Pavlov incorporated his findings on aging into his theory of higher nervous activity. Some of the major findings showed that salivary conditioning and stimulus differentiation were difficult to establish in old dogs, but that conditioned reflexes established earlier in life persisted into old age. Pavlov hypothesized that…

Four experiments tested four month olds on visual discrimination tasks. As the time allotted to solve these problems was shortened, infants who looked at stimuli for a short amount of time performed better than other infants, indicating that performance superiority was attributable to speed of processing. (BC)

Three boys (ages 9-13) with academic deficits learned delayed matching-to-sample tasks that used complex sample stimuli, consisting of a picture and printed word. The procedure engendered new constructed-response spelling performances and arbitrary relations among pictures and printed words in matching to sample. (Author/JDD)

Study used two experiments to examine the development of children's comprehension of the use of intonation and belief verbs to mark the relative certainty with which a speaker makes a statement. It is argued that children's understanding of prosody will be best revealed in contexts in which they are required to respond to the pragmatic function of…

Two studies examined four- and five-month-old infants' behaviors of leaning forward toward, and reaching for, an object placed within or beyond their reach. Infants who did not lean forward showed a decline in reaching behavior when the object was placed beyond their reach. (MDM)

Assessed 13- and 20-week-olds infants' discrimination between shearing stimuli, in which columns of dots move vertically on a screen at different velocities, and foil stimuli, in which all dots move at the same velocity. Results revealed the threshold levels of dot velocity in shearing stimuli at which discrimination occurred. (BC)

Investigated the hypothesis that preschoolers encode perceptual attributes, but not conceptual attributes, of objects in recall tasks. Children were asked to recall typical and atypical objects, or objects that varied in typicality and size. Children were influenced by both conceptual and perceptual stimulus characteristics. (LB)

A study examined how well children could discriminate matches from nonmatches of multicomponent stimuli within the prototypic mental rotation task and how long it would take them to make such discriminations. The goal was to determine whether children are differentially sensitive to the various spatial features of visual stimuli and whether…

A theory of visual information acquisition and visual memory is described that conjoins two models that have been used to describe low-level perceptual and higher level cognitive processes. Six experiments with 21 adult observers generally support the theory, although some weakness is discussed. (SLD)

This study of 20 3-month-old infants with Down's syndrome and 20 nondisabled infants found that both groups were successfully trained to produce movement in an overhead crib mobile by kicking, and displayed long-term retention a week later. Conditioning and retention-test performance of the two groups did not differ. (Author/JDD)

Results of a study of low-income, inner-city mothers and their 13-month-old infants supported the hypothesis that increased physical contact achieved through the use of a soft baby carrier makes mothers more responsive to their infants and promotes the formation of more secure attachment between infants and mothers. (RH)

The nature of stimulus and response generalization is discussed, and a number of tasks related to generalization that are commonly taught in early childhood programs are identified. Research evidence concerning generalization is reported, as are recommendations for enhancing generalization. (Author/LB)

Four young adults with moderate mental retardation were taught to include "please" as part of requests, and four environmental stimuli present during training were assessed. Results indicated that presence of a single stimulus or pair of stimuli increased the probability of the "please" response, whereas presence of other…

Forty-five normal-hearing college students were assessed on lipreading performance at three visual distances, with three treatment conditions. All three groups showed an overall decrease in lipreading performance with increasing distance. Subjects who received combined lipreading and Tactaid II+ training performed better across all distances than…