Young infants perceive an object's trajectory as continuous across occlusion provided the temporal or spatial gap in perception is small. In 3 experiments involving 72 participants the authors investigated the effects of different forms of auditory information on 4-month-olds' perception of trajectory continuity. Provision of dynamic auditory…

Children (n = 130; M[subscript age] = 8.51-15.68 years) and college-aged adults (n = 72; M[subscript age] = 20.50 years) completed numerosity discrimination and lexical decision tasks. Children produced longer response times (RTs) than adults. R. Ratcliff's (1978) diffusion model, which divides processing into components (e.g., quality of…

This paper is in memory of Esther Thelen, who passed away while President of the Society for Research in Child Development. A survey of Esther Thelen's career reveals a trajectory from early work on simple movements like stepping, to the study of goal-directed reaching, to work on the embodiment of cognition, and, ultimately, to a grand theory of…

Three experiments assessed the ability of 2 to 5-year-old children to infer, under very simple task conditions, what another person sees when viewing something from a position other than the children's own. (ST)

Subjects of this study were 144 White, middle-class children in kindergarten, first, second, and fourth grades. Children were interviewed individually about their explanations for both academic and social outcomes and their evaluations of their own outcomes. Self-evaluations became less positive in both domains and less similar across domains with…

Describes two experiments that assessed young children's understanding of the characteristic uncertainty in the physical nature of random phenomena as well as the unpredictability of outcomes. (HOD)

Describes a pilot project with two objectives: 1) to develop measures of curiosity and exploration applicable to preschool children, and 2) to investigate the relationship between variations in exploratory behavior and other aspects of emotional and cognitive growth. (WY)

The dependence of immediate, short-term and long-term reproductive memory on operative understanding was studied in elementary school students. Results are interpreted in terms of Piaget's theory. (ST)

This study sought to assess the ontogenetic course of three classes of size-value phenomena. Size-value phenomena refers to the observation that valued and neutral objects physically equal in size are judged as unequal. Results are discussed in terms of perceptual development. (ST)

Examined the ability of 1-year olds to remember the location of nonvisible targets. Found that infants were able to associate a nonvisible target with a direct landmark and to code its distance and direction with respect to themselves or the larger framework. Difficulty of coding with indirect landmarks was associated with cognitive complexity and…

This study examined whether 16-month-old walking infants take the material composition of a handrail into account when assessing its effectiveness as a tool to augment balance. Infants were encouraged to cross from one platform to another via bridges of various widths (10, 20, 40cm) with either a wobbly (foam or latex) or a wooden handrail…

Examines whether the relationship between mothers' ratings on the Neonatal Perception Inventory of their one-month-old infants and social-emotional development at 4 1/2 years as reported for a Pittsburgh population could be demonstrated in a Seattle population. (MP)

Examined 2-month-old infants' perception of sparse random-dot displays depicting an illusory shape against a background in three experiments in which background texture, luminance cues, and relative motion information were added or deleted. Found that infants preferred novel stimuli in each condition, revealing an early capacity to perceive shape…

Examined whether children who vary in their behavioral responses to ambiguous provocation but have similar attributional processes differ in their social goals and self- efficacy perceptions. Subjects were 781 4th and 5th graders. Found that aggressive, withdrawn, and problem-solving responders differed in the social goals and self-efficacy…

Forgetting, as defined by Piaget as Stage IV error, was studied in infants. Results partially support Piaget's hypothesis. (ST)