This study explored children's play behavior as it may be influenced by a particular type of television programming, i.e., shows based on commercially available toys. Subjects were two groups of 5- to 6-year-old and 7- to 8-year-old boys who were exposed to a representative program, The Transformers, which features the Transformer toys. Exposure…

The significance of spatial factors on an initial segmentation and an active attentional phase was demonstrated by briefly exposing spatial configurations of elements, and then asking the subjects to reproduce the patterns or to search them for a target letter. The stimulus displays consisted of small o's forming different spatial configurations,…

Levels of independent variable(s) are often mixed within each block of trials rather than each level being presented in a separate block in research of various types. Two experiments involving tasks of a visual nature were conducted to demonstrate that such mixing can easily obscure the effects of principal interest. A target circle was projected…

Previous studies of the effect of age and modality on digit span task performance have yielded inconsistent results. To eliminate some of the methodological difficulties in prior research, 18 college students and 18 older adults were given the digit span task by means of three different modalities: (1) visual successive; (2) visual simultaneous;…

A study of whether perceptual processes of children can be viewed within a structuralist frame of reference and whether the concept of the group of transformations and related notions can be used to formulate perceptual phenomena and to predict experimental results. (Author/CS)

Examines the relationship between the magnitude of the stimulus familiarity effect and the level of stimulus incongruity. Results support a theory of visual selection based on information-conflict resolution. (Author/ED)

The eye movements of subjects, ages 4 through 62, were recorded by a corneal reflection technique during familiarization with and recognition of random patterns of luminous dots. Findings were consistent with the views of both Soviet researchers and Piaget, that overt, perceptual activity diminishes with increasing age. (Author/SDH)

Results from three studies involving college, third grade, and kindergarten subjects, suggest that individuals across a wide age range are able to use the visual properties of a stimulus for only a very brief period as the basis for making matched judgments. (Author/SDH)

This study was designed to investigate whether age differences in timesharing performance would be found if the baseline performance of younger and older children was experimentally equated. Two groups of twelve 8-year-olds and one group of twelve 13-year-olds participated. Each subject performed a compensatory tracking task and an auditory…

Investigates the different levels in the visual system at which laterality effects may be elicited in children and adults in five different experiments. (LLK)

This article reported the development of a method aimed at exploring the relations among covert muscle behavior, mental imagery, and the perception of external stimulation. (Author/RK)

The theory is developed and contrasted with other theories of pattern recognition in which concepts such as stimulus generalization, tuned detectors, and preprocessing play major roles. A relation of this theory to problems encountered among disabled readers ("dyslexics") is also brought out. (Author/BJG)

Investigates extent to which perceptual factors of speed and flexibility of closure represent more general processes also operating in cognitive and personality domains by including in a single factor analysis perceptual tests and new tests requiring cognitive abilities resembling closure abilities operating in the perceptual domain. (RC)

Clarifies issues involved in use of heart rate as index of newborn attentional responsivity by reviewing related studies and concluding that heart rate variability can be used in studying attentional responsivity state, and intra-individual and individual variables. (ED)