Thirty-one infants ages 8 to 16 days were shown a ball, a ball picture, and a homogeneous stimulus card. Infants' reaching behavior was scored for each of the stimuli according to the following: (1) lateral extension of arm, (2) arcing movement of arm toward midline, and (3) flexion of arm toward the upper half of the body. (Author/MP)

Results from one experiment indicated that the temporal pattern and spectral complexity of moderately intense auditory stimuli influenced cardiac responses in 24 alert newborns. A second study extended the temporal-pattern effect to other vowel stimuli in a no-delay discrimination paradigm. (Author/RH)

An adaptive up/down tracking procedure was used in combination with a visually reinforced head-turn response to examine infants' (6 to 18 months of age) auditory sensitivity for 500-, 2000-, and 8000-Hz tone bursts. Six-month-olds were significantly less sensitive to the 8000-Hz tone than to either lower frequency; older infants demonstrated…

To test whether six-month-old infants recognize the auditory similarity of speech sounds sharing a value on a phonetic-feature dimension, an operant head turn procedure was used. Results indicated that the performance of infants trained on phonetically related speech sounds was far superior to that of infants in the nonphonetic control group.…

One- to four-month-old infants' abilities to see various structural characteristics of a subjective contour figure were assessed by means of a habituation procedure. (Author/DB)

Two-year-old children's memory for locations of hidden objects was examined in four cue conditions. Pictures marked hidden-object locations in three of these conditions, and either depicted or were related associatively to hidden objects. In the fourth condition, only blank cards were presented with the objects. (Author/SS)

The reactions of 38 infants to two social stimuli (talking and smiling) as well as a nonsocial stimulus (a rotating musical mobile) were observed longitudinally when the infants were 4-, 12- and 20-weeks-old. (CM)

Attempts to differentiate the serial habituation hypothesis from the regression to the mean hypothesis as explanations for the reduction of visual fixations in the form perception of four-month-old infants. Results support a regression to the mean interpretation of the data. (JMB)

Examines the structure of television pictures as based on the theory of field forces and suggests a series of hypotheses, experimental designs, and statistical treatments to be used in empirical investigations. Various theoretical concepts of composition (field forces) are discussed. (Author/JEG)

Explores preconditions for developing a theory of visual argument, emphasizing frequent lucidity of visual meaning, importance and varieties of visual context, argumentative complexities raised by notions of representation and resemblance, and questions visual persuasion pose for the standard distinction between argument and persuasion. Contains…

Discusses procedural schematics (how-to texts). Suggests activities to help students understand these documents. (RS)

Longitudinal findings concerning five male and five female infants suggest a number of age-related changes in the dominant mode of visual scanning. Changes involve attention to locations of stimulus contours and prominent features of the stimulus, accuracy of saccades, and reversion to scanning behaviors typical of younger ages under certain…

First, newborns' preferential looking between pairs of stimuli which varied in real size and viewing distance was solely determined by retinal size. Second, newborns desensitized to changes in distance and retinal size strongly preferred an object of a different size to the familiar one. (RH)