Examines discrimination of geometric shapes by three-month-old infants who were presented with geometric stimuli moving laterally at two different velocities. Finds that subjects discriminate between geometric forms at velocities that, according to previous findings, might interfere with shape discrimination. Discusses the possible interactive…

A total of 20 infants either five or seven months of age viewed computer-generated random-lot displays in which accretion and deletion of texture provided the only information for contours. Infants of both age groups showed significant preferences to reach for the apparently nearer regions in the displays. (Author/RH)

Tested the hypothesis that young children's tendency to draw horizontal or vertical objects perpendicularly to an oblique surface reflects their preference for perpendicular drawings as conceptually correct depictions. (Author/RH)

A total of 12 three, four, five, seven, and nine year olds and 12 adult control subjects were asked 20 questions about two exemplars of each of 16 categories of animate beings and inanimate objects. Children's responses indicated that animism is not a pervasive phenomenon and does not appear to be the most primitive mode of conceptualization.…

Explores whether an empirical classification of healthy fetuses as fetal heart rate accelerators or decelerators would predict birth weight and neonatal behavior scored with the Brazelton Neonatal Behavior Assessment Scale. (Author/RH)

Four groups of 18 adult listeners rated the tape-recorded cries of low- and high-risk infants on four Likert-type scale items. Results indicate that within-group methods of cry presentation accentuate the perceptual distance among cry types and may actually create many reliable differences that would not be found in between-group comparisons.…

Finds that, between five and seven years of age, the majority of healthy children in modern urban-industrial societies achieve an understanding of the irreversibility, nonfunctionality, and universality of death. Suggests reasons for ambiguous findings concerning the relationship between the acquisition of the concept of death and developmental…

By varying task requirements within a common procedural framework, four experiments established conditions under which children exhibit different understandings of life. Overall, results suggested that even four- and five-year-olds know that people and other animals are alive and that almost all "inanimate objects" are not. (Author/RH)

Examines the development of a general event representation and the relationship between general and specific event memories among kindergarten children who were interviewed about the school-day routine four times during the first three months of school. (Author/RH)

Two studies with three-year-old children tested the hypothesis that, whereas errors of phenomenism predominate when children are asked about objects' real and apparent properties, errors of intellectual realism predominate when children are asked about objects' real and apparent identities. Results provided some support for the property-identity…

Two experiments assessed the importance of form versus function in 2-year-old infants' categorizations. Nonsense objects were constructed to independently vary form and function. Adults differentially directed subjects' attention to one or the other stimulus dimension. It was hypothesized that children's conceptualizations would vary as a function…

This study provides a cross-sectional and longitudinal examination of the narrative language skills of reading-disabled and normally achieving children. The investigation was made to illuminate language processes involved in these skills and to assess how these processes relate to reading achievement over time. (Author/RH)

Study One examined Swedish and American children's understanding of what constitutes fair criteria for the distribution of goods (i.e., distributive justice). Study Two compared children's distributive justice in family and peer contexts, and Study Three attempted a longitudinal assessment of distributive justice reasoning in two different…

First- and fifth-grade children were presented a hypothetical case in which a child, who circumstantial evidence suggests might have committed a "crime," is punished by a parent. Subjects were asked to indicate whether or not they believed the punishment to be fair and the child guilty. (Author/RH)

Twenty children in each of five groups (mean ages in years and months of 5-9, 8-9, 11-9, 14-7, and 17-8) were asked to evaluate the disciplinary techniques employed by mothers over a range of situations in which a culprit was described as having transgressed. Children's disciplinary preferences were examined, and ratings of different techniques…