Place value concepts were measured longitudinally from kindergarten (2017) to first grade (2018) in a diverse sample (n = 279; M[subscript age] = 5.76 years, SD = 0.55; 135 females; 41% Black, 38% White, 8% Asian, 12% Latino). Children completed three syntactic tasks that required an explicit understanding of base-10 symbols and three approximate…

Infants have shown variable success in quantity comparison tasks, with infants of a given age sometimes successfully discriminating numerical differences at a 2:3 ratio but requiring 1:2 and even 1:4 ratios of change at other times. The current explanations for these variable results include the two-systems proposal--a theoretical framework that…

Growing evidence indicates a suite of generalized differences in the attentional and cognitive processing of adults from Eastern and Western cultures. Cognition in Eastern adults is often more relational and in Western adults is more object focused. Three experiments examined whether these differences characterize the cognition of preschool…

Skilled behavior requires a balance between previously successful behaviors and new behaviors appropriate to the present context. We describe a dynamic field model for understanding this balance in infant perseverative reaching. The model predictions are tested with regard to the interaction of two aspects of the typical perseverative reaching…

This article reports 2 experiments using a new method to study 18- to 24-month-olds' visual experiences as they interact with objects. Experiment 1 presents evidence on the coupling of head and eye movements and thus the validity of the head camera view of the infant's visual field in the geometry of the task context. Experiment 2 demonstrates the…

In the novel noun generalization task, 2 1/2-year-old children display generalized expectations about how solid and nonsolid things are named, extending names for never-before-encountered solids by shape and for never-before-encountered nonsolids by material. This distinction between solids and nonsolids has been interpreted in terms of an…

Two experiments explore children's spontaneous labeling of novel objects as a method to study early lexical access. The experiments also provide new evidence on children's attention to object shape when labeling objects. In Experiment 1, the spontaneous productions of 21 23- to 28-month-olds (mean 26;28) shown a set of novel, unnamed objects were…