Three experiments examined infants' processing of three-dimensional (3D) information in static images. Results indicated that 3-month olds are sensitive to 3D cues in static images. However, discrepancies based on these cues may not engage infants' attention like those based on fundamental features. (Author)

Three studies investigated toddlers' judgments and communications about how desires, perceptions, and emotions connect in people's lives and minds. Findings indicated that in appropriate circumstances, young children realized that a person's perception of desirable or undesirable objects leads to related emotional experiences. Children's…

Four experiments examined 8-month-olds' ability to reason about collections of objects. Findings suggested that infants' expectations about object behavior do not automatically apply to any and all portions of matter within the visual field. The behavior of an entity and infants' prior experience played roles in determining whether infants will…

Familiarized 6- and 8-month-olds with speech sounds from a phonetic continuum, exhibiting a bimodal or unimodal frequency distribution. Found that only infants in the bimodal condition discriminated tokens from the endpoints of the continuum. Results demonstrate that infants are sensitive to the statistical distribution of speech sounds in the…

Examined developmental change and stability of visual expectation and reaction times among 5-, 7-, and 12-month-old term and preterm infants. Found that reaction times declined with age while anticipations increased. Infants with faster reaction times were more likely to anticipate upcoming events; this effect disappeared when time between stimuli…

Tested in six experiments young infants' sensitivity to vowel and gender information in faces and voices. Found that 4.5-month-olds showed no evidence of matching face and voice based on gender, but were able to ignore irrelevant gender information and match based on the vowel. Robust evidence of ability to match based on gender was not evident…

Two experiments examined whether infants are sensitive to holistic combinations of line junctions in 2-D images that adults use to derive overall 3-D structure. Results suggested that 3-month-olds are sensitive to holistic combinations of line junctions that adults use to derive 3-D information but also selectively attend to these 3-D cues in…

Recorded reaching and looking preferences and movement kinematics among 5- to 15-month-olds divided into 3 age groups. Found that 5- to 12-month-olds preferred looking first at a large object; 8.5- to 12-month-olds showed preference for reaching to smaller (graspable) objects. Kinematic measures suggested that onset of object-oriented action…

Investigated the role of person familiarity in 3.5-month-olds' ability to recognize emotional expressions. Found that when more contextual information such as person familiarity was available, infants as young as 3.5 months recognized happy and sad expressions. Findings suggest that in early stages, infants are sensitive to contextual information…

This study examined tactile and visual temporal processing in adults with early loss of hearing. The tactile task consisted of punctate stimulations that were delivered to one or both hands by a mechanical tactile stimulator. Pairs of light emitting diodes were presented on a display for visual stimulation. Responses consisted of YES or NO…

In Study 1, 54 3-, 6- and 9-month-old infants interacted with an adult stranger who engaged in a face-to-face (dyadic) exchange. Dyadic interaction was halted when the adult turned away to look at an object. In a Joint Attention condition, the adult alternated visual attention between the infant and the object, and in a Look Away condition she…

Toddlers show a surprising lack of knowledge about solidity when they are asked to search for a ball that rolled behind a screen and stopped at a barrier whose top was visible above the screen. They search incorrectly, failing to take into account the position of the barrier. This study examined details of this failure by simplifying the task in 2…

Early childhood neglect can limit a child's normal cognitive development and result in behavior problems in the classroom. When normal attachment is disrupted, learning difficulties can result in problems with time awareness. It has also been shown that an awareness of time is a key concept for the formation of organizational and math skills. This…

This study used meaningful pictorial material to compare the functions relating complexity to two different response variables (voluntary looking time and preference) in 192 students from grades 1 to 8. Age differences were slight, and results are discussed in terms of theories postulating increases with experience in preference for complexity.…

This study investigated the development of perceptual, cognitive, and affective perspective taking in 167 kindergarten through sixth grade children. Task intercorrelations were low, nonsignificant, and inconsistent, supporting the view that perspective taking is a multidimensional social-cognitive construct. (JMB)