Investigates potentially facilitative effects of internal and external attention-drawing devices--output and visual input enhancement--on acquisition of English relativization by adult English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) learners. Addresses whether producing output promotes noticing of formal elements in target language input and affects subsequent…

Maltreatment status and mothers' facial behavior predicted children's scores on an emotional expression recognition task. There were positive relations between mothers' and children's expressive behavior. Findings indicate that children's recognition and production of facial expressions depends in part on the expressive environment provided by…

Two levels of vividness and three levels of motivation were measured in reactions to product label warnings. Vivid product warnings proved to be an effective tool to communicate the hazards associated with product use. (JOW)

Investigated infants' integration of visual information across space and time. In four experiments, infants aged 12 months and 6 months viewed objects after watching light trace similar and dissimilar shapes. Infants looked longer at novel shapes, although six-month-olds did not recognize figures taking more than 10 seconds to trace. One-year-old…

Measured covert shifts of visual attention of observers aged 6, 8, and 20 years in a speeded classification task. There were differences between children's and adults' attention orientation, target processing, and use of predictability in cues. (SAK)

Suggests that visual signs help to define form and structure and are significant in their semantic function. Discusses a series of typographic studies that examine the relationship of designer, text and interpreter in the dialectical process of communication in which meaning is rendered and made explicit. (RS)

Two studies examined the relationship between children's perceived social control and their visual reactions to videotapes of positive, neutral, or fearful child-doctor interactions. Found that children with high levels of social control showed high visual engagement when viewing the fearful scenes, whereas low-control children showed relatively…

The capacity of six-month-old infants to maintain information in working memory for several seconds was studied using two versions of an oculomotor delayed response task. The results indicated that infants maintained information about stimulus locations in working memory for three to five seconds. (MDM)

Children and adults learned associations between line length and color. Subjects were then presented with pairs of colors and asked to choose the color that had been associated with the longer line. For all ages, choice reaction times were related to differences in, and ratios of, line lengths. (BC)

Two experiments examined the hypothesis that aging is associated with an increase in schema-related influences on memory performance. Attention allocated during the study was disrupted more by lack of scene organization in older adults. There were relatively systematic age differences for retention. (RH)

Three groups of 12-month-old infants were tested for cross-modal and intramodal transfer of information about shape. Infants were given either visual or tactual familiarization and then tested for visual or tactual recognition. Overall, intramodal transfer was superior to cross-modal transfer. Cross-modal asymmetries were found for which possible…

Examined instrumental learning in premature infants by providing 45 infants at 33 weeks conceptual age with either a teddy bear that "breathed" quietly at the infant's respiration rate (BB) or a nonbreathing bear (NBB). Over a two-week period, infants provided with the BB decreased their latency to contact the bear; infants exposed to the NBB…

Seven experiments studying the relations among different measures of visible and informational persistence after a physical stimulus involving 52 undergraduate and graduate students rely on state-trace analysis to develop a theory of these two types of persistence in the context of visual-information processing. (SLD)

Explored the role of motion versus shape in children's categorization of animal and non-animal kinds. Found that 4-year olds significantly used motion cues over shape cues to categorize objects. Seven-year olds and adults tended to use motion more than shape to categorize animals but not geometric figures. Findings support view that children are…

Four-year olds, 6-year olds, and adults were given a computer-game mental rotation task, but with no instructions on mental rotation or other mental activity. Reaction time patterns and verbal reports revealed that 6-year olds were comparable to adults in spontaneous use and subjective awareness of mental rotation. Four-year olds who referred to…