Children of 8 and 11 years and college students were tested for reorientation of visual attention to a target following a cue. The first, but not the second, experiment showed an interaction between distance of target from fixation and stimulus onset asynchrony. The second experiment suggested children can orient attention through valid, neutral,…

Children's memory of single infant experience was evaluated. At 6.5 months, infants participated in study of reaching in light and dark for sounding object. Children repeated dark procedure in laboratory when they were either one year or two years older. Older children with infant experience reached and grasped the sounding object significantly…

Two experiments investigated the possibility that three year olds would do better on tasks in which belief cues were stronger than on standard false belief tasks, in which the children could reason backward to the belief from its effects. Findings provided strong support for the view that three year olds do not fully understand the…

Children and adults listened to stories containing an early goal sentence and a later inconsistent outcome. Later object inferences varied with context sentence and title for all ages. Results established that the effects involved maintenance of concept accessibility and that early concept prominence was critical. (BC)

Investigates the effect of orientation of depth cues on the magnitude of perceived depth in pictures. Finds that, for each test drawing, the orientation with the far point above the near point provided greater depth perception than any other orientation. Discusses possible contributions of observer experience and height of visual field. (DSK)

Two experiments examined the influence of phonological and semantic processes on 4- to 6-year olds' ability to learn to read words. Results indicated that children learned phonetic cues better than control cues and that learning was influenced by both the phonetic properties of the cue and the imageability of the words used. (Author/KB)

ACT-R is a theory of cognition that is capable of learning the relative usefulness of alternative rules. A model using this implicit procedural learning mechanism is described that explains results from a concept formation task created by McDonald and MacWhinney (1991), a role assignment created by Blackwell (1995), and a new role assignment…

Four experiments examined children's interpretations of lexical and vocal cues to speaker affect and the developmental trajectory of their interpretations of discrepancy. Findings indicate that the affective interpretations of 7- to 10-year-olds reflected a weighted- averaging strategy favoring the affect conveyed lexically. Both 4- and…

Two experiments investigated factors affecting joint visual attention in 12- and 18-month-olds. Findings indicated that parental pointing at objects elicited more episodes of joint visual attention than looking alone. Although infants most reliably followed gestures to targets in front of them, even 12-month-olds followed gestures to targets…

Evaluates the effectiveness of self-learning pictorial-parenting manuals in teaching basic child-care skills to parents with intellectual disabilities who are being monitored by child protection agencies. The manuals alone increased child-care skills in nine out of 10 mother in the study and in 12 of 13 child-care skills. The remaining skill was…

A study of three adolescents with mental retardation found that six-picture matching was more accurate when a written list was available at the time the participant selected the comparison pictures than on trials in which a list was written, read, or both, but was not available during comparison selection. (CR)

This study compared the performance of 17 children with autism, 17 children with mental retardation, and 31 normally developing children on a false belief task performance using a posting manipulation (a pictorial cue which facilitates the false belief performance of normal 3-year-olds). The performance of autistic children was significantly…

Examined impact of cued observation and discussion by 24 parents of their young children's play on parental thinking and reasoning about child development and parent-child relations. Found statistically significant changes in reasoning about eight issues after the eight-month intervention, demonstrating change within a range that could be viewed…

Evaluated in three experiments a dynamic systems theory account of perseverative errors on "A-not-B" task. Found that 9-month-olds perseverated when reaching for identical targets, but made nonperseverative responses when reaching in the presence of a highly distinctive B target. Reach direction was jointly determined by target's…

A study involving 12 preschool children with mental retardation, 13 children with autism, and 21 controls failed to show any facilitative effects of the use of representational and nonrepresentational cues on the performance of the children with and without autism on false belief tasks. (Contains references.) (CR)