Four experiments examined effects of the number of features and feature relations on learning and long-term memory in 3-month olds. Findings suggested that memory load size selectively constrained infants' long-term memory for relational information, suggesting that in infants, features and relations are psychologically distinct and that memory…

Examined whether experience correctly producing consonants plays role in developing underlying representation which mediates perception of visible speech. Tested preschoolers (divided by their making of substitution errors) and adults in auditory-only, visual-only, and audiovisual conditions. Found children overall showed less visual influence and…

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…

Mentally retarded and nonretarded adults (n=32) performed visual vigilance tests in which single digits were presented at either a fast or slow rate and the rate shifted without warning. Retarded observers detected fewer targets and made more false alarms than did nonretarded observers in all test conditions. (Author/JDD)

Provides instructions for making and tips for using laptop flannel boards as portable and individual teaching tools. (MG)

Confirms that infants, like older children, are capable of responding categorically to stimuli of different shapes if these are similar in hue. (PCB)

Studies the allocation of attention of 100 four- and five-year-olds on a selective attention task. Results suggest that preschoolers are capable of using selective strategies when the task is made meaningful by the inclusion of a familiar script that provides supportive cognitive context. (RJC)

Results of a study involving 30 infants of 14, 20, or 26 weeks confirm the existence of distinct developmental phases of attention during the visual preference procedure. Findings suggest a refinement of the use of fixation duration as the major dependent variable in the procedure. (RH)

Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded from infants shown sets of familiar faces presented frequently and infrequently, and a set of novel faces presented infrequently, and correlated with infant emotional behavior and cortisol levels. Found that infants scoring higher on the normative ERP factor were more distressed during parent…

Examines the visual attention of undergraduate students to the television screen. Finds that varying relatedness of episodes, for which strategic inertial processes should vary in strength, produces a corresponding difference in inertia of looks crossing boundaries. Suggests that results previously interpreted as reflecting nonstrategic processes…

This study examined relationships among lens color, visual grating, visual detection task performance, and peripheral retinal brightness thresholds among four adults and four children with reading disabilities and age-matched controls. Subjects with reading disabilities displayed significantly lower contrast sensitivity when tested with sine-wave…

Three experiments explored the effect of introducing novel information about a central target after a short delay on six-month-old's recognition of the original target, the novel exposure target, and a completely novel one. They found that the infants' memory of a central target is resistant to impairment by conflicting postevent information after…

This article analyzes arguments for a written form of American Sign Language (ASL) and suggests the need for empowerment of people who are deaf. It concludes that suggestions to "alphabeticize" ASL or to utilize English glosses would not be appropriate, and proposes that deaf people themselves develop a visual symbol system. (DB)

Three experiments tested the hypothesis that the differences in infants' time of looking at a stimulus are due to infants' differential sensitivity to global and local visual information. Found that both long- and short-looking four-month-old infants were sensitive to both types of information. These results do not support the hypothesis. (MDM)

Two experiments involving 12 college students suggest that the visual system codes the temporal relationship between stimuli that occur in close temporal contiguity and that the temporal code determines performance in tasks requiring temporal integration. Potential extension to other visual phenomena is discussed. (SLD)