Presents four studies designed to explore the ability of 6- to 9-month-old infants to differentiate objects on the basis of configuration or structure and to recognize a particular configuration after varying experiences with it. It was found that 9-month-olds but not 6-month-olds were capable of recognizing the invariant form of objects.…

Kindergarten through fourth graders (N=170) were tested for conservation and then interviewed following the presentation of a story about an elderly woman's death, in an attempt to assess children's understanding of 3 concepts: irrevocability, cessation of bodily processes, and universality. (Author/JMB)

Examined young children's interpretations of the meanings of indirect speech acts (e.g. it's 10 o'clock) in paragraphs of a contextual type biasing a literal interpretation (time of day) or an extraliteral interpretation (time to prepare for bed). Memory for these meanings was also assessed. (Author/JMB)

The ability of 7-, 8-, and 9-year-olds to understand proverbs was examined by having subjects compare each proverb against two thematic pictures: a nonliteral correct interpretation of the proverb and a foil. The results, which contradict the literature, showed consistent above-chance performance across subjects, ages, and proverbs. (Author/JMB)

The role of memory factors in the vowel discrimination of normal and at-risk 8-week-old infants was examined by studying the categorical versus continuous discrimination of very brief vowels in a nonnutritive sucking paradigm. Discrimination of the silent delay interval between the last familiar and the first novel stimulus was also examined.…

Children participating as listeners in a referential communication task with an adult speaker were asked to choose one of a set of four pictures on the basis of the speaker's message. Messages were either informative, providing enough information to choose the correct referent, or ambiguous, describing two of the four referents. (Author/JMB)

Thirty-two 4-year-olds made same and different judgments about pairs of stimuli requiring detailed comparison. Two treatment conditions were employed: a judgment-only condition and a justification condition in which children explained the reasons for their judgments. (Author/JMB)

The relationship between visual stimulus intensity and finger movements was examined in infants ranging in age from 10 to 15 weeks and from 20 to 25 weeks. Infants were shown a cone that varied in size, brightness, and distance from them. (Author/JMB)

Infants aged 9, 14, 20 and 24 months were observed looking at picture books with their mothers. The integration of pointing with verbal and visual behaviors together with activities pertaining to the task, such as page turning, are described. (Author/JMB)

Quantity and quality of creative thinking on the Wallach and Kogan Creativity Battery were found to be moderately related in both sixth-grade children and high school seniors. (Author/JMB)

Second, fifth, and eighth graders viewed one of four edited versions of a commercial action-adventure television program that varied in number of scenes and in degree of organization. Both recognition and recall measures were used to assess children's memory for central content, peripheral content, and implicit content. (Author/JMB)

Observations were made in ten preschools of children's interactions in two domains of social events: social conventional and moral. Interviews were also administered to children from the preschool to determine whether they made a conceptual distinction between social conventional and moral events. (Author/JMB)