Dynamic relations during the preschool years across processes of control and understanding in the domains of emotion and cognition were examined. Participants were 263 children (42% non-White) and their mothers who were seen first when the children were 3 years old and again when they were 4. Results indicated dynamic dependence among the…

Tested and confirmed, in three experiments, the hypothesis that children's interpretation of pictorial conventions and of the expression "look like" may increase their tendency toward intellectual realism. That is, a tendency to respond to requests for perceptual reports by indicating what is known about an object or array, rather than…

The capacity of newborn infants for smooth-pursuit eye movements in single-target tracking and in optokinetic nystagmus to a moving striped field was examined utilizing DC electrooculography. (JMB)

The thesis of this article is that, in the drawings of very young children, line is produced as a path before it is produced as a boundary. An explanation for this progression is proposed. (Author/JMB)

Children of ages two and one-half, three, and three and one-half years were tested for their understanding of object hiding. Results indicated that children of this age can be both nonegocentric and skillful at estimating what other people do and do not see under various viewing conditions. (JMB)

Four studies explored preschoolers' understanding of thought bubbles depicted in cartoons. Few three- and four-year olds knew what a thought-bubble depiction was without instruction, but if simply told that the thought bubble "shows what someone is thinking," the majority easily understood the devices as depicting thoughts generally and…

Preschoolers placed stickers on maps to show locations of objects currently in view. Vantage point (eye-level versus raised), map form (plan versus oblique), and item type (floor versus furniture location) were varied. Results showed that using an oblique map first aided subsequent performance on a plan map. Subjects performed worse on floor…

This study is an initial investigation of the effects of a fading procedure upon acquisition and transfer of discrimination learning with children younger than 36 months of age. (CS)

Four experiments investigated three- and four-year-old children's knowledge of projective size-distance and projective shape-orientation relationships. Results indicated that preschool children's understanding of these relationships seems at least partly cognitive rather than wholly perceptive, providing further evidence for the acquisition of…

Studied the effects of the relative and absolute salience of three dimensions (form, color and position) on the ability of four- and six-year-olds to employ multiplicative classification. (CW)

If after teaching a label for 1 object, a speaker does not name a nearby object, 3-year-olds tend to reject the label for the nearby object (W.E. Merriman, J.M. Marazita, L.H. Jarvis, J.A. Evey-Burkey, and M. Biggins, 1995a). In Studies 1 (5-year-olds) and 3 (3-year-olds), this effect depended on object similarity. In Study 2, when a speaker used…

The purpose of this study was to determine the extent to which verbal processes influence recognition memory for visual scenes in preschool children. Children were shown line drawings of 12 pairs of items and were asked to describe them. One week later, a recognition test was given in which ability to remember elaborated and unelaborated pictures…

Results indicate that for children in this study's age range orientation is a less salient discriminative cue than either size or color. (Author/MB)

In Experiment I, 24 preschoolers were tested on left-right, vertical-horizontal, and mirror-image oblique discriminations under essentially context-free conditions. Experiment II contrasted children's performance under context-free conditions with their ability to discriminate orientation in the presence of external visual cues. (RH)