One way to describe the location of an object is to relate it to another object. Often there are many nearby objects, each of which could serve as a candidate to be the reference object. A common theoretical assumption is that features that make a given object salient relative to the candidate set are instrumental in determining which is selected.…

Primary somatosensory maps in the brain represent the body as a discontinuous, fragmented set of two-dimensional (2-D) skin regions. We nevertheless experience our body as a coherent three-dimensional (3-D) volumetric object. The links between these different aspects of body representation, however, remain poorly understood. Perceiving the body's…

In two experiments, we investigated whether 4- to 5-year-old children's ability to demonstrate their understanding of aspectuality was influenced by how the test question was phrased. In Experiment 1, 60 children chose whether to look or feel to gain information about a hidden object (identifiable by sight or touch). Test questions referred either…

How people describe complex arrangements of objects in a small-scale setting has not been sufficiently investigated to predict when discourse strategies shift versus remain stable. In a study involving 100 native German participants, we investigated speakers' choices of perspective, as well as location and orientation information, when describing…

We examined automatic spatial alignment effects evoked by handled objects. Using color as the relevant cue carried by an irrelevant handled object aligned or misaligned with the response hand, responses to color were faster when the handle aligned with the response hand. Alignment effects were observed only when the task was to make a reach and…

Attention operates to select both spatial locations and perceptual objects. However, the specific mechanism by which attention is oriented to objects is not well understood. We examined the means by which object structure constrains the distribution of spatial attention (i.e., a "grouped array"). Using a modified version of the Egly et…

We investigated whether 6-year-olds' understanding of perceptual aspectuality was sufficiently robust to deal with the presence of irrelevant information. A total of 32 children chose whether to look or feel to locate a specific object (identifiable by sight or touch) from four objects that were hidden. In half of the trials, the objects were…

In 2 experiments, participants learned bone anatomy by using a handheld controller to rotate an on-screen 3-dimensional bone model. The on-screen bone either included orientation references, which consisted of visible lines marking its axes (orientation reference condition), or did not include such references (no-orientation reference condition).…

In order to better understand how to design hands-on child-computer interaction, we explore how different styles of interaction facilitate children's thinking while they use their hands to manipulate objects. We present an exploratory study of children solving a spatial puzzle task. We investigate how the affordances of physical, graphical…

This study investigated the motor strategy involved in mental rotation tasks by examining 2 types of spontaneous gestures (hand-object interaction gestures, representing the agentive hand action on an object, vs. object-movement gestures, representing the movement of an object by itself) and different types of verbal descriptions of rotation.…

The authors examined 14- to 26-month-old infants' understanding of the spatial relationships between objects and apertures in an object manipulation task. The task was to insert objects with various cross-sections (circular, square, rectangular, ellipsoid, and triangular) into fitting apertures. A successful solution required the infant to…

Developmental research suggests that whereas very young infants individuate objects purely on spatiotemporal grounds, from (at latest) around 1 year of age children are capable of individuating objects according to the kind they belong to and the properties they instantiate. As the latter ability has been found to correlate with language, some…

The authors investigated the mechanical basis of length perception through dynamic touch using specially designed rods in which the various moments of mass distribution (mass, static moment, and rotational inertia) were varied independently. In a series of 4 experiments, exploration style and rod orientation were manipulated such that the relative…

How does an observer decide that a particular object viewed at one time is actually the "same" object as one viewed at a different time? We explored this question using an experimental task in which an observer views two objects as they simultaneously approach an occluder, disappear behind the occluder, and re-emerge from behind the occluder,…

In 4 experiments, the authors explored the role of visual layout in rule-based syntactic judgments. Participants judged the validity of a set of algebraic equations that tested their ability to apply the order of operations. In each experiment, a nonmathematical grouping pressure was manipulated to support or interfere with the mathematical…