Examines claims about the role of object-sharing in development by describing development of !Kung infants' interest in objects and their caregivers' actions toward them when they are engaged in object-related acts. (PCB)

Examined the possibility of effects of pencil diameter on preschoolers' pencil management and performance. Each child used pencils of large or regular diameter to perform graphomotor tasks. There were no apparent differences in pencil management and performance related to pencil diameter. (Author/BB)

Three experiments attempted to clarify the effect of altering the spatial presentation of irrelevant auditory information. Previous research using serial recall tasks demonstrated a left-ear disadvantage for the presentation of irrelevant sounds (Hadlington, Bridges, & Darby, 2004). Experiments 1 and 2 examined the effects of manipulating the…

Conjunction errors occur when participants incorrectly identify as "old" novel test stimuli created by recombining parts of two study stimuli (parent items). Prior studies have reported that the conjunction error rate is higher when parent items are studied together than when they are studied apart (a parent proximity effect). In several…

The present experiments assessed the effects of different manipulations between cue preexposure and cue-outcome pairings on latent inhibition (LI) in a predictive learning task with human participants. To facilitate LI, preexposure and acquisition with the target cues took place while participants performed a secondary task. Presentation of…

Previous research has shown that synchronized flicker can facilitate detection of a single Kanizsa square. The present study investigated the role of temporally structured priming in discrimination tasks involving perceptual relations between multiple Kanizsa-type figures. Results indicate that visual information presented as temporally structured…

Figures that undergo an implied rotation are remembered as being slightly beyond their final position, a phenomenon called representational momentum. Eight experiments explored the questions of what gets transformed and what types of transformations induce such representational distortions. (GDC)

Deferred imitation of object-related actions was studied at two ages, 12 and 18 months, to examine development of competence in observational learning. Three task categories were investigated: simple/single reiterative, and sequentially coordinated actions. Examination of partial successes at both ages was useful for suggesting phases in…

Discusses developmental changes in visual exploration and manipulative investigation among children from birth to six months, six to 12 months, and 12 to 36 months of age. Also discusses pretend play in terms of decentration, decontextualization, and integration. (RH)

Investigates the predictability of cognitive differences at 12 months from infant and maternal behaviors at 4 months. Overall, the results show that some individual differences in cognition may be predictable across the first year of life. (Author/RH)

Sixty children aged 2-3 to 5-6 were given four quantity tasks that tested their understanding of "more" and "same." Tasks involving a manipulative response were significantly easier than those involving a yes/no judgment. (Author/RH)

Results of a study of 38 preschool children observed and videotaped during performance on a jigsaw-puzzle task indicate that puzzle solutions accompanied by a high rate of verbalizations were judged as more proficient, solved with a high rate of puzzle-solving moves, and completed in a shorter period of time. (Author/RH)

Twenty-five one-year-olds were administered two tasks (each of which consisted of a familiarization stage followed by a recognition stage) in order to determine whether infants can recognize the shapes of objects by touch alone. (CM)

When older siblings were present with infants and their mothers in the backyard of a private home, the infants went further from their mothers, traversed a larger area of the yard, left their mothers more quickly, and stayed away longer. (RH)