Argues for an informational processing explanation for young infants' ability to use featural cues to differentiate objects, centering on the development of infants' ability to integrate both featural and object information. Considers information processing propositions and evidence on object segregation. (JPB)

Discusses connections between infants' use of object knowledge in recognition to computational, psychophysical, and neurophysiological research on adult perceptual segmentation and grouping. Considers these connections through a framework of the tasks and information involved in adult object segregation, and interprets Needham's results in this…

Discusses responses to Needham's research on infants' use of featural, physical and experiential information to segregate displays. Considers characterization of different kinds of information infants use when segregating objects. Discusses relations between processes underlying object segregation. Considers the roles of visual versus linguistic…

Tested in three experiments hypothesis that coordinating saying number-words and pointing to each object to count requires use of the central executive and that cost of coordination decreases with age. Found that for 5- and 9-year-olds and adults, manipulating difficulty of each component affected counting performance but did not make coordination…

Examined in 4 experiments 3- and 4-year-olds' ability to communicate about containment and proximity relations. Found that when describing where a toy mouse was hidden, children were more likely to successfully disambiguate a small landmark when it was in, rather than next to, the large landmark. Three-year-olds initiated searches faster when the…

Subjects with autism (n=36) were assigned a simple "reach, grasp, and place" task. Comparison with nonautistic children who had mental retardation and younger normally developing children found that the autistic subjects had problems in executing goal-directed motor acts even in very simple situations, suggesting an independent and marked…

Adapted Keil's predictability method to examine adults' and preschoolers' conceptions of numbers, focusing on the ontological distinction between numbers and sets of objects. Found that children, like adults, attribute spatial-arrangement properties to collections much more than to numbers, although both are considered to have quantitative…

Developmental theories can be augmented by incorporating knowledge about atypical ontogenesis. Examination of individuals with high-risk conditions and psychopathological disorders can shed light on system organization, disorganization, and reorganization. Child maltreatment is examined to illustrate benefits from studying individuals subjected to…

Examines the ability of infants to track and anticipate the final orientation of an object. Subjects were infants ranging from an average of four months to eight months old. Three experiments, with the last one as control, were carried out. Concludes that infants show some rudimentary mental rotation from four months of age. (MOK)

Summarizes 17 recent ERIC documents and journal articles discussing Piagetian perspectives on children's cognitive abilities and development. Includes sources on children's thought, learning, and problem-solving processes; physical and natural causality; correspondence and number conservation; circular reactions; the 5- to 7-year shift; science…

Examined the effect of functional values of stimuli on orienting response elicitation. Subjects were 50 4-month-old infants and were randomly assigned to 1 of 3 experimental conditions. Results suggested the importance of taking into account the functional value of stimuli when analyzing infant attention. (MOK)

Claims developmental education has been the central medium of upward social mobility for the American lower and middle classes. Outlines the accomplishments of developmental educators as well as the national trends that bear directly upon the work of developmental educators. (NH)

Observational reinforcement was studied in 5- to 13-month-old infants in a contingency learning task where brief light-sound stimulation followed touches on a canister. The task was preceded by differing preexperiences for each of four study groups. Overall, results demonstrated that vicarious reinforcement in the preexperiences probably did not…

Summarizes similarities and differences between the working memory models of Pascual-Leone and Baddeley. Debates whether each model makes a specific contribution to explanation of Kemps, De Rammelaere, and Desmet's results. Argues for necessity of theoretical task analyses. Compares a study similar to that of Kemps et al. in which different…

Examined how 3- and 5-year-olds and adults extend names for human-made artifacts. Found that even 3-year-olds were more likely to provide artifact names (e.g., "knife") when they believed objects were intentionally created and to provide material-based descriptions (e.g., "plastic") when they believed objects were accidentally…