Nonoperational first graders were taught Piaget's horizontality concept. In comparison to control subjects, training group subjects significantly increased correct responses, maintained their gains, and transferred their training from a straight-sided jar to a round-sided jar. (Author/DB)

Studies of the development of spatial representation have led to blind children being characterized as deficient, inefficient, or different when compared to sighted children. The study described involved 68 blind and blindfolded sighted students (7 to 18 years old) who explored a real or model room, either freely or guided along a predetermined…

Reviews pertinent developmental and neuropsychological literature and arrives at a hypothesis relating the left brain lateralization of speech to the origin of early naming as part of selective (right-biased) orienting to perceived salience or change. (Author/SS)

A previously-reported experiment designed to determine if newborn infants can distinguish between an object and a picture of that object is flawed. The experimental design and an improved design are discussed. (BB)

Describes an art teacher's efforts to develop her students' perceptive awareness through use of a nature walk. The idea was to bring students in contact with a variety of objects, in this case different kinds of stones, which could be utilized creatively. (RK)

Children 3.5 to 5 years old were asked to judge which of several possible sets of parts matched a configured target form and to copy the target forms. Found a significant association between age and performance on the perception task and consistency across the two tasks. (MDM)

Compared face recognition ability in young children with autism to that of children with typical development and developmental delay. Took electroencephalographic recordings of brain activity while children viewed pictures of their mothers and unfamiliar females, and familiar and unfamiliar toys. Found that autistic children showed no differences…

Investigated the relationship between sex hormones and spatial performance among adolescents treated with sex steroids for delayed puberty. Found that spatial performance varied according to gender but did not vary with levels of actively circulating sex steroids. Reviewed physiological mechanisms, developmental periods, and past empirical work…

Examined which of the attentional operations underlying exogenous orienting (disengaging, shifting, and/or engaging) improves with age in children from 6 to 14 years old. Found that disengaging attention alone distinguished between younger and older children's performance, regardless of whether attention alone or attention and associated sensory…

Standard or enhanced Blissymbols, designed to represent familiar actions, attributes, and objects, were shown to 20 3 year olds, who guessed their meaning. The number of their guesses that referred to the enhancements was twice as great as the number that referred to the standard Blissymbol base. (Author/JDD)

Addresses two questions that may be unique to perceptual learning: What are the circumstances that produce learning? and What is the content of learning? Suggests a critical principle for each question. Provides a discussion of perceptual learning theory, how learning occurs, and what gets learned. Includes a 121-item bibliography. (DR)

Investigated young African American children's stories to determine how preschoolers portray themselves and what social processes accompany these narrative portrayals of self. Found that all subjects demonstrated remarkable objective understanding of self. Girls chose to talk about self in the context of past events, whereas boys chose to talk…

One experiment determined that the minimum angle at which infants can discriminate 2 sound presentations decreases substantially toward 48 weeks of age. In 3 succeeding experiments, infants aged 16, 20, and 28 weeks were able to discriminate sounds presented to each ear between 50 and 75 microseconds apart. (BC)

Results of two studies indicated that three- and four-year-old children understood that, although perception is necessary for knowledge, it is irrelevant for imagination and that three year olds often claimed that imagination reflected reality. (MDM)