Investigates ability of nine-month-old infants to imitate simple actions with novel objects. Looks at both immediate and deferred imitation. Findings show that imitation in early infancy can span wide enough delays to be of potential service in social development. (Author/RWB)

Examines the effect of different training methods on perceptual learning of impulsive children. A matching to sample method (M), and a differentiation method (D) were used. Data indicated that Ss receiving D training learned to process features distinguishing stimuli; whereas, Ss receiving M training showed no preference for a particular mode of…

Research was designed to determine whether developmental differences in sensitivity to more peripherally presented material could be found under conditions in which overt eye movements during the presentation of task material were not possible. (Author)

A sample of 838 children ages 5 through 15 years in Australia, England, North America, and Sweden were interviewed about physical and sexual development. The study covers essentially the same area as Bernstein and Cowan (1975) but extends the sample on the dimensions of age, number, randomness, and comparisons made. (Author/RH)

Four experiments tested the hypothesis that the importance of linguistic labels for young children's conceptual organization stems from a privileged processing status of auditory input over visual input. Findings indicated that when auditory and visual stimuli were presented separately, 4-year-olds were likely to process both kinds of stimuli,…

Three experiments investigated 2- to 6-month-olds' perception of the continuity of an object trajectory that was briefly occluded. Results across experiments provided little evidence of veridical responses to trajectory occlusion in the youngest infants, but by 6 months, perception completion was more robust. Results suggest that perceptual…

Four experiments confirmed the widely accepted hypothesis that, although children as young as two engage in pretend play, even four and five year olds do not understand that pretending requires mental representation. Children appear to misconstrue pretense as its common external manifestations, such as actions, until at least age six. (MDM)

Presented five- and eight-month olds with silent moving and static video images of self, peer, and doll, and sounds of self and nonsocial objects. Found that recognition of one's image develops through experience with dynamic facial stimulation during first eight months. By five months, infants treat their faces and voices as familiar and social…

Examines how certain human brow and mouth gestures influence the attributions of social dominance made by children. Hypothesizes that stimulus photographs depicting adults with lowered-brow expressions or without smiles appear to be more dominant relative to photographs showing adults with raised-brow expressions or with smiles, respectively. (HOD)

Examines whether kindergarteners, second-graders, fourth-graders, and adults can extract relative weight information from observing collisions and lifting events, and if they can judge whether or not collisions are momentum-conserving. Subjects saw either videotapes of events or sequences of static images; younger children appeared to be…

Two major trends in the development of natural language concepts were found in the present study: (1) there was a clear indication that such concepts exist in a relatively fragmented form in young children; (2) young children showed a strong dependence on perceptual attributes in their definitions of concepts. (Author/CB)

For the age range tested there is a lag between the perception and production of certain facial expressions. (Authors)

Maintains that advances in the literature on perception-action development suggests that tool use may be a more continuous developmental achievement than previously believed. Suggests new research directions, including efforts to investigate the processes by which children detect and relate affordances between objects, coordinate spatial frames of…