Infant research is providing accumulating evidence that number-space mappings appear early in development. Here, a Posner cueing paradigm was used to investigate the neural mechanisms underpinning the attentional bias induced by nonsymbolic numerical cues in 9-month-old infants (N = 32). Event-related potentials and saccadic reaction time were…

Two experiments examined infants' ability to form a spatial category when habituated to few (only 2) or many (6) exemplars of a spatial relation. Sixty-four infants of 10 months and 64 infants of 14 months were habituated to dynamic events in which a toy was placed in a consistent spatial relation ("in" or "on") to a referent…

Fundamental to amassing a lexicon of relational terms (i.e., verbs, prepositions) is the ability to abstract and categorize spatial relations such as a figure (e.g., "boy") moving along a path (e.g., "around" the barn). Three studies examine how infants learn to categorize path over changes in "manner," or how an action is performed (e.g., running…

Five experiments examined 79 newborns' ability to discriminate and categorize a spatial relation, defined by the left-right spatial position of a blinking object-target with respect to a vertical landmark-bar. Three-day-old infants discriminated the up versus low position of an object located on the same side of the landmark-bar (Experiment 1) and…

Results show that at eight months of age ability to identify the site of an event after reorientation is based on the spatial relationship between the event and environmental features. The latter include features associated with room shape as well as a landmark at the site of the event. (Author/RH)

Apparently, six-month-old infants can encode a location relative to a landmark, but in many situations their visual search behavior is dominated by a learned egocentric code. (RH)

Accuracy of pattern copying was studied in male and female 10-year-olds. Contrary to expectations, independent of the stimulus size, males benefited from spatial response cues whereas females did not. (Author/DB)

A sample of 44 infants of five months of age showed a significant reaching preference for the apparently nearer region of a computer-generated display. This indicated that the infants were sensitive to boundary flow information for depth at an edge. (RH)

Results of 3 experiments indicated that 12 month olds, but not 8 and 10 month olds, looked longer at objects of a different shape from test objects than at the test objects. Twelve month olds recognized rectilinear, but not curvilinear, forms. They recognized differences in forms for three-dimensional, but not two-dimensional, objects. (BC)

Four-, 6-, and 8-year olds were shown a test picture of three related objects and two target pictures of three objects in the same or different relation. Older subjects, but not 4-year olds, identified the relationally similar target picture when the test and target also differed in dimensions of size or color saturation and in direction of size…

Three experiments using the familiarization-novelty preference procedure confirmed the hypothesis that three-month-old infants could form categorical representations of spatial relations above and below. The infants, after being shown a familiarization diagram with a dot appearing in multiple locations below a line, showed a preference for a novel…

In Experiment I, 24 preschoolers were tested on left-right, vertical-horizontal, and mirror-image oblique discriminations under essentially context-free conditions. Experiment II contrasted children's performance under context-free conditions with their ability to discriminate orientation in the presence of external visual cues. (RH)

Two studies examined four- and five-month-old infants' behaviors of leaning forward toward, and reaching for, an object placed within or beyond their reach. Infants who did not lean forward showed a decline in reaching behavior when the object was placed beyond their reach. (MDM)

Two experiments found that (1) by age 8 months infants perceived that leaning extends their effective reaching space to grasp objects; (2) by 10 months they perceived the effective limits of leaning and reaching; and (3) by 12 months they began to perceive how this space may be extended by a mechanical aid. (MDM)

After viewing pictures of simple objects varied in color and spatial location, first, third, and fifth graders were assessed for their abilities in automatic processing of spatial and color information. In general, no evidence was found to suggest that the processing strategies of younger children were less sophisticated than those of older…