Equally divided by sex and distributed equally across fourth/fifth, eighth/ninth, and college grade levels, 144 subjects performed a mental rotation task under instructions emphasizing either accuracy or speed of response, or both. Instructions had large and consistent effects on speed of response but were not as uniformly effective in their…

Four experiments were conducted to extend the "descriptions" approach to differences in using retrieval cues among second and fourth graders and college adults. Results indicate that deficits in discriminability and constructability contribute independently to developmental differences in using retrieval cues and suggest reasons for such deficits.…

Kindergarten, second-grade, and fifth-grade students reconstructed an episode from an array of pictures and foils. Generally, children integrated picture sequences into logically ordered episodes whenever sequence structure encouraged such organization. Among the results, recall of logical sequences surpassed that of illogical sequences at all…

Malawian children and young adults displayed sensitivity to static information for depth when stimulus objects subtended equal visual angles. When the more distant object was larger but subtended a smaller visual angle than the nearer, subjects tended to base judgments on retinal size. Motion paralax information increased accuracy of judgments of…

Results revealed that arithmetic-disabled and spelling/arithmetic-disabled children had significantly lower storage and retrieval scores on a nonverbal task but did not differ on a verbal task; reading/spelling-disabled children differed only on retrieval scores from verbal task; and the reading/spelling/arithmetic-disabled children differed only…

Results suggest that infants' errors in searching for a visible object reflect lapses of attention rather than systematic misunderstandings of objects or space and so are not incompatible with an information-processing account of early search. (Author/RH)

Among children four to six years of age who were tested for their detection of melodic transformations, performance was superior for transformations that changed contour, for greater changes in contour, and for faster presentation rates. Melodies transformed by reordering tones were as discriminable as those transformed by inserting novel…

Consistent with findings that infants respond to the orientation of a visual stimulus in a categorical-like manner, data obtained from two- and three-month-old infants viewing horizontal/vertical, non-mirror-image oblique, and mirror-image oblique stimulus pairs indicate that elements of oblique/oblique stimulus pairs were more frequently confused…

Kindergarten, fourth-grade, and tenth-grade subjects were shown pictures representing combinations of high and low inter-item association and high and low category relatedness. Results support a hypothesis that young children cluster in recall as a function of associations while older individuals show organizational flexibility which serves to…

School-aged children and adults performed tasks examining the relation between selective and integrative aspects of visual attention. In a selective attention task, younger children experienced more interference when elements were closely spaced than did other subjects. In an integrative attention task, age differences were most pronounced when…

Kindergarten children and third-grade students viewed transformations either apparently violating or actually preserving conservation. Subjects reacted to and explained outcomes and responded to conventional conservation questions. Findings suggest very gradual progression across two stages and indicate that many third-grade students do not view…

Compared to mental and chronological age-matched groups of normal children, six autistic children (1) did not maximize reinforcement; (2) sampled less, and less efficiently; and (3) were much less responsive to extinction. Autistic sampling behavior was redirected by stimulus change. Results are viewed as perhaps causally related to many…

Examined preschool and first-grade children's recall and recognition memory for two types of atypical actions: irrelevancies and disruptions, and for script actions (schemata). Children recalled disruptions better than irrelevancies in stories about familiar events, especially with delayed recall. Script actions were least well recalled. (SKC)

Compared linguistic flexibility of deaf and hearing children aged 8 to 15 by examining relative frequencies of their nonliteral constructions in stories written and signed or spoken. Considered seven types of nonliteral constructions. Results suggest deaf children are more competent linguistically and cognitively than are hearing children. (SKC)

Focused on the developmental acquisition of the conditional implication interpretation of "if-then." Knowledge of three aspects of this interpretation was assessed for adults and 3rd-, 5th- and 8th-graders. Results showed the older three groups were significantly more likely to understand conditional implication, with improvement occurring between…