In this article, the authors investigated how perturbing optical information affects the guidance of an unfolding hitting action. Using monocular and binocular vision, six participants were required to hit a rectangular foam object, released from two different heights, under four different approach conditions, two with object rotation (to perturb…

Infants aged 4 and 6 months were presented with events in which a person acted so as to set another person, or an inanimate object, in motion. In one condition, the actor spoke to the person (natural) or inanimate object (unnatural); in the other condition, the actor grasped and manipulated the person (unnatural) or object (natural). Six-month-old…

The authors tested whether the effects of the Ebbinghaus illusion on grasping are corrected during late phases of the movement. Surprisingly, the grasp aperture was corrected neither under no-vision (N = 52) nor under full-vision (N = 48) conditions. The authors show that previous reports of a correction (e.g., S. Glover & P. Dixon, 2002a) are due…

During visually guided grasping movements, visual information is transformed into motor commands. This transformation is known as the "visuomotor map." To investigate limitations in the short-term plasticity of the visuomotor map in normal humans, we studied the maximum grip aperture (MGA) during the reaching phase while subjects grasped objects…

Two experiments tested the DeLoache, Pierroutsakos, Uttal, Rosengren, and Gottlieb (1998) claim that 9-month-old infants attempt to grasp objects depicted in photographs. In Experiment 1, 9-month-olds viewed an object, a photograph of the object, and 2 flat, nonpictorial displays. On average, they reached for the photograph and nonpictorial…

Previous research has emphasized the role of within-match similarity in children's comparisons. The current study investigated another potentially important contributing factor, namely the distinctiveness of the matching items relative to other items in the scene. Using a well-known relational mapping task, we found that 3- and 4-year-olds made…

In 4 experiments, the authors explored the role of visual layout in rule-based syntactic judgments. Participants judged the validity of a set of algebraic equations that tested their ability to apply the order of operations. In each experiment, a nonmathematical grouping pressure was manipulated to support or interfere with the mathematical…

THE EFFECTIVENESS OF TWO TRAINING METHODS TO FOCUS ATTENTION ON THE CRITICAL FEATURES OF LETTER-LIKE FORMS WAS STUDIED. SUBJECTS WERE 32 KINDERGARTEN PUPILS. SIX NONSYMETRICAL, STANDARD LETTER-LIKE FORMS AND FOUR TRANSFORMATIONS, CONSISTING OF RIGHT-LEFT AND UP-DOWN REVERSALS, 180 DEGREES AND 90 DEGREES ROTATION, WERE USED AS STIMULI TO LEARNING.…

In two experiments, forty 26-week-old infants were repeatedly exposed to an object and were then shown an object that was different from the original object in color, shape and/or texture. Results showed that looking and manipulation increased for the novel shape and texture objects and looking increased for the novel color object. (Author/JMB)

Active touch, passive touch with a moving object, and passive touch with a still object were examined developmentally with 192 subjects in first, third, and fifth grades and college. (Author/JMB)

Three studies of stereotyped object behaviors conducted with 10 severely mentally retarded children (6 to 19 years old) found that context did not affect the level of object stereotypes, that most children responded to flexibility, and that judges could estimate only some of the feedback properties of the objects. (Author/CB)

Experiment designed to answer questions regarding the correspondence between concrete and abstract actions. (Author/CB)

Forty 10-month-old infants were given two minutes to explore tactually an object in a totally darkened room. Subsequently, during a two-minute test trial in the dark, 10 infants were given the same object and 10 were given a novel shape. Novel shapes were manipulated significantly longer than familiar forms. (RH)

The authors support use of manipulative aids in teaching learning disabled students but caution that the selection and application of a manipulative aid should not be a haphazard process. Guidelines are given for using manipulative aids in teaching students who are experiencing difficulty in mastering mathematical concepts. (Author/SBH)