Kindergarten to third grade mathematics achievement scores from a prospective study of mathematical development (n = 306) were subjected to latent growth trajectory analyses. The four corresponding classes included children with mathematical learning disability (MLD, 6% of sample), and low (LA, 50%), typically (TA, 39%) and high (HA, 5%) achieving…

Background: Trials in developing countries suggest that improving young children's diet may benefit cognitive development. Whether dietary composition influences young children's cognition in developed countries is unclear. Although many studies have examined the relation between type of milk received in infancy and subsequent cognition, there has…

This experiment examined the accuracy with which newborn infants orient their heads toward a sound positioned off midline within hemifields. The study also evaluated newborns' ability to update the angle of their head turn to match a change in localization of an ongoing sound. Alert newborns were held in a supine position and presented a sound at…

The specificity of memories has been identified as a factor affecting reality monitoring performance. To examine the reality monitoring model of Johnson and Raye (1981) and to explore the relationship between memory specificity and reality monitoring, the amount of cognitive operations involved in processing information was manipulated for 72…

A series of experiments were conducted to study variables affecting the alignment of blind pedestrians at street intersections. In the first two studies blindfolded sighted students, serving as adventitiously blind people undergoing mobility training, learned one of three strategies: no concrete strategy, tracking, and tracking and compensation.…

Study looks at whether spatial memory is automatic by examining the effects of intentionality and attention to contextual organization in spatial memory. The pattern of results demonstrated that reconstruction was enhanced by intentionality or by the goal-relevant activity of attending to contextual spatial relations. (Author/RWB)

To investigate the effect on young children's coding of spatial information, an array of boxes was varied in number, size, and arrangement and was shown to 20 toddlers. Only the number of boxes defining the left and right sides of the array influenced performance; that is, multiple boxes were associated with the use of external objects as spatial…

Results of a study of 10- and 11- month-old infants support Piaget's hypothesis that practical, action-based knowledge during infancy is involved in achievement of spatial understanding and that the experience of self-initiated locomotion contributes to spatial development. (Author/NH)

Reasons for the relative lack of literature dealing with spatial concepts of low-vision children are suggested, and two assumptions are seen as invalid: (1) that knowledge of spatial concepts is not important for persons with low vision and (2) that children with low vision have adequate knowledge of spatial concepts. (CL)

Examines memory for room-sized spatial arrangement in relation to spatial and classification operations. Sixty first-grade children were given two Piagetian spatial tasks and a two-dimensional point duplication problem. Results of multiple regression showed that Euclidean knowledge (measured by verticality) and age in months predicted memory for…

Both "positive self" (in which students placed themselves in a specific relation to an object) and "positive object" (in which they placed an object in a specific relation to another object) were effective in four children's acquisition and generalization of prepositional concepts. The "positive object" required slightly fewer sessions. (CL)

West African Hausan Children (N=110) aged 5-6 were administered a torque test and relationshps between the torque task and visual spatial tasks were analyzed. Findings supported the assumption that educational experience related to circling accounts for decrease in torque, or that the educational experiences have potential influence on cortical…

five spatial tasks were administered to two groups of seven and one-half to nine and one-half year olds: 18 language-disabled and 18 children with normal language development. The language-disabled were less accurate on all tasks which involved anticipation or prediction of mental rotations, movements, or other transformations. (Author/CL)

Among young children, verbalization led to many correct responses on a spatial perspective task (indicating views of an object from different positions), but produced few correct responses in a rotation task (imagining different views of a rotating object). Results suggested that language enhances perspective task performance by allowing feature…

The spatial ability of 12 blind young adults was compared with that of 11 sighted and 11 blindfolded sighted students. Results indicated that past visual experience helps individuals to acquire spatial information from large scale environments. (Author/CL)