In three studies, 12-month-old infants were familiarized either tactually or visually with objects and were then tested for visual recognition memory using either (1) the familiar and a novel object, (2) colored pictures of the objects, or (3) outline drawings of the objects. (Author/MP)

Examines the ability of infants ranging in age from 21 to 44 hours old to discriminate among visual stimulus arrays. Infants were able to discriminate between small sets of dots (two to three dots) but not between larger sets (four to six). (Author/MP)

Results indicated that infants only 0.7 to 71 hours old can imitate adults' facial gestures (mouth opening and tongue protrusions). Three possible mechanisms underlying this early imitative behavior are suggested. (Author/MP)

Children ages 6 to 13 and college students were asked to remember length relationships for three pairs of sticks. For six- and seven-year-olds, relationships between interlinked pairs were much more difficult to retain than were relationships between unrelated pairs. (Author/MP)

The gross-motor activity of 27 three- and four- year-olds was assessed through teacher ratings, parent responses to the activity scale of the Colorado Childhood Temperament Inventory, and data from uncalibrated actometers worn by children during free play. Activity scores composited across multiple actometers had high reliability and correlated…

Investigated the academic and intellectual performance of disadvantaged children who had experienced one of four types of prekindergarten program or no prekindergarten at all. IQ measures did not differ significantly among preschool program groups, but differential effects in the three grades, related to both preschool program and sex, were noted…

In three studies, children between five and ten years of age listened to short stories and answered questions about presented and implied information. Results demonstrated how hypothesis generation, comprehension monitoring, clue integration, and converging evidence influence children's developing inferential reasoning. (Author/MP)

Two experiments examined processes underlying contextual facilitation effects in second, fourth, and six graders and adults. Patterns of response latencies indicated that, for the youngest children, facilitation for stimuli presented in a related context was attributable to an automatic activation process. (Author/MP)

Results showed that monolingual and bilingual preschoolers understand equally that objects may be renamed. However, monolinguals were more likely to mention the object's properties when justifying an answer, whereas bilinguals were more likely to mention social context. (Author/MP)

Reviews and considers the developmental implications of recent evidence on the nature of sibling interaction from observational studies of preschool children. Argues that, in contrast to complementary interaction, sibling influence is most plausibly associated with reciprocal interaction and with sociocognitive development. (Author/RH)

Presents a stochastic model for distinguishing mental arithmetic errors according to causes of failure. A series of experiments (1) studied questions of goodness of fit and model validity among four and five year olds and (2) used the model to measure the relative contributions of developmental improvements in short-term memory and arithmetical…

Examines the performance on verbal, nonverbal, and memory tasks of 11 girls (ages 8 to 11 years) identified as having an extra X chromosome at birth. Results showed that the triple-X girls were markedly inferior in their performance on the tasks, indicating a rehearsal deficit, an inability to use list structures, and weaker language skills.…

Three experiments tested whether 12- to 24-month-old children showed systematic search, persistence, and/or end-screen search in the invisible-displacement task. A fourth study tested whether end-screen search resulted from seeing the experimenter move his hand through the series of screens. (RH)

Investigates the ability of four-, seven-, and ten-month-old infants to perceive and base novelty responses on correlations among perceptual attributes in a category-like context. In a habituation-dishabituation paradigm, ten-month-old infants clearly responded on the basis of the correlation among attributes, while four- and seven-month-old…

Holograms of faces were used to study two- and five-month-old infants' discriminations of changes in facial expression and pose when the stimulus was seen to move or to remain stationary. While no evidence was found suggesting that infants preferred the moving face, evidence indicated that motion contrasts facilitate face recognition. (Author/RH)