Recent evidence suggests adults and infants selectively attend to features of action, such as how a hand contacts an object. The current research investigated whether this bias stems from infants' processing of the functional consequences of grasps: understanding that different grasps afford different future actions. A habituation paradigm…

To examine the relationship between visual attention in infancy and the stimulus variables of contour and numerosity, 2- and 4-month-olds were placed in three experimental conditions. The results showed that contour and numerosity, acting in tandem, are responsible for the age-complexity shift observed by previous investigators of infant…

A study of the use of multiple form dimensions in pattern classification by children in Grades 2 and 5, and adults. Reliability of classification, number and saliency of features selected, and accuracy with which they were used all implied continuous development of perceptual skills. (Author/ED)

Attempts to determine whether the stimulus dimension to which infants respond is different in fixed-trial and infant-control methodologies. Infants 10 weeks of age were shown four facelike patterns differing along two dimensions: number of elements and extent to which elements were organized to resemble the human face. (Author/RH)

Kindergarten children were given a salience-assessment task to determine each child's salience hierarchy for the dimensions of form, color, and position, and each was provided perceptual training with his/her least salient dimension. Training promoted fewer errors in recall in comparison to control group subjects. (RH)

Groups of second grade and college students were presented with a series of three-alternative, four-dimensional discrimination problems that contained probes for the subject's hypothesis. Subjects received either complete feedback or partial feedback. In the latter condition, when subjects were told their response choice was incorrect the correct…

Four-month-old infants' stimulus preferences were assessed using an operant paradigm with mobile reinforcers of different colors (blue, green). (Author/MP)

In an evaluation of the relation between dimensional salience and preschoolers' judgments of bigness, 3-year-old children were shown triads of rectangles and asked to select the "big" one. The biggest rectangle in each triad was neither the tallest nor the widest. (JMB)

An investigation of 4-month-old children's attention responses to pattern dimensions and orientations by comparing the duration of an infant's fixation to changes in the orientation and structural arrangement of a previously exposed pattern. (ED)

This paper presents a model of infant visual recognition which proposes that an infant faced with a novel and a previously exposed target responds with one "look" consisting of a chain of 2 covert responses: (1) an attentional observing response to a dimension and (2) a fixation response to a cue. (Author/JMB)

A series of experiments is described whose aim was to define certain of the effective dimensions of stimulation in the newborn's visual environment. (Author/JMB)

Preschool and kindergarten nonconservers (N=114) were examined for their use of dimensions relevant to quantity in two conservation-of-substance tasks. The results were interpreted as being counter to Piaget's 4-step equilibration model of the development of compensation and conservation. (ST)

These results provide a more precise attentional interpretation of both preference and pretraining effects. (Authors)