Mothers' ability to decode their children's nonverbal expressions of four affects (happiness, sadness, fear, and anger) was contrasted with the decoding ability of a matched group of nonmothers. Results indicate that mothers were accurately able to decode expressions of happiness but had relative difficulty with decoding expressions of sadness,…

Three experiments investigated the conditions under which redundant verbal information would facilitate a listener's performance. Kindergarteners, first graders, and fourth graders were asked to select which of several groups of pictures a message (either redundant or constructive) described. Verbal redundancy was found to facilitate only older…

Compares the verbal and nonverbal teaching strategies used by children and adults in two laboratory classification tasks. Results support the hypothesis that children would use more nonverbal instruction than adults and would instruct through references to specific instances rather than by providing general information relating items to each…

Examines distraction effects in terms of the information processing necessary to discriminate distractors from task-relevant information and with regard to a child's ability to meet those demands. Thirty kindergarteners, 30 second graders, and 27 fourth graders participated in the study. (Author/MP)

Two experiments replicate and extend Luria's (1959, 1961) findings on the development of verbal self-regulation during early childhood. Results support Luria's hypothesis that overt verbalizations facilitate control of motor behavior in young children and that language can play an active and integrative role in the development of behavioral and…

Undertaken within the framework of the best example theory of categorization, this study investigates category acquisition as a function of initial exposure to only good exemplars and as a function of exposure to single as opposed to multiple exemplars. Six severely handicapped children, ranging in age from 8 to 18 years, participated. (Author/MP)

Three experiments were conducted to examine normal preschool and retarded children's use of similarity relations (two items go together because overall they are the most similar in a given set of stimuli) or dimensional relations (two items go together because they are the same size) as a predominant basis for classification. (MP)

The performance of children ages three through eight years on a series of class-inclusion problems was examined in two studies. Three patterns of performance were observed: three- and four-year-olds responded in an approximately haphazard pattern, five- and six-year-olds tended to be consistently wrong, and seven- and eight-year-olds showed a…

Three experiments analyze correspondence training as a chain of five events consisting of a promise, a series of behaviors leading from the promise to its nonverbal fulfillment (called "intermediate behavior"), a nonverbal behavior that fulfills the promise, a verbal report, and a nonverbal (or reported) behavior. Eight three- to five-year-old…

In a series of three experiments, first-, second-, third-, and fourth-grade children were asked to recall the names of their classmates. Assessment of their organization according to various classroom groupings (e.g., seating arrangement and reading group) was then performed. (Author/MP)

Examines story retention after one-week interval as a function of topic familiarity and test-item relatedness. Second- and fifth-grade children participated. (MP)

Investigates the effect of the relationship between conditions at encoding (familiarization) and retrieval (test) with regard to infants' performance on a paired-comparison recognition test. Subjects were 32 male and 32 female infants between 8.7 and 10.3 months of age. (MP)

Reports on a study designed (1) to modify one of the few existing standardized tests of conservation so that it can be used to assess the conservation of identity as well as the conservation of equivalence and (2) to use both versions of the test to gather additional evidence on the question of developmental priority among young children. (MP)

It was hypothesized that children may experience more difficulty in interpreting "after" than "before" because the sentence typically used in comprehension tasks facilitates dependence on sentence-processing strategies effective with "before" sentences but only partially effective with "after" sentences. For 24 nursery school children, "after" was…