Two experiments examined conditional discrimination in 4- to 6-year-olds. Children learned to choose one of two objects (e.g., circle) when the background was, say, red and to choose the other object (e.g., triangle) when the background was, say, blue. Awareness was assessed and interpreted as a marker of relational processing. In Experiment 1,…

Two experiments are reported that reveal the sources of the developmental difference reported by Crane and Ross that second graders learned more than sixth graders about attributes made relevant after solution of a discrimination task. Experiments use technique whereby children verbalize their hypotheses during solution of a discrimination…

Four hundred children ages 5, 9, and 12 were given a component selection task with stimuli differing in color and shape. Results indicate a greater tendency for older than younger children to withdraw attention from a normally dominant component when advantageous to adopt another feature as the primary functional cue. (Author/SB)

Subjects of this study were 19- and 23-week-old infants. Results showed that the older infants demonstrated differential attention to novel over familiar stimuli during recognition tests. An examination of their responsiveness during familiarization presentations indicated differing trends of looking activity. (Author/CS)

To determine whether the distraction effect associated with material rewards in discrimination learning can account for the superior performance of reward groups in probability learning, the performance of 144 school children (preschool, second, and fifth grades) on a two-choice successive discrimination task was compared under three reinforcement…

Purpose of the present experiment was to compare performance of four- and six-year-olds on a conjunctive concept task in which the two relevant values were either within a single dimension (unidimensional) or from two different dimensions (bidimensional). (Authors)

Results indicated the following: unitary stimuli were easier to encode; partitioned stimuli were easier to recode; recoding was much more difficult than encoding; extended training improved performance; second graders were slightly better at encoding and much better at recoding than were kindergarten children. (Author/DB)

Examined 7- and 9-month-olds' ability to categorize cats and dogs as separate from one another. Found that both groups formed a cat category that included novel cats but excluded a dog and an eagle, and formed a dog category that included novel dogs and a novel cat but excluded an eagle. Results mirrored those of 3- to 4-month-olds with visual…

This study tested the prediction that a satiation effect would be observed only for noncontingent social stimuli, and not for groups presented with contingent stimuli. (Author/SB)

Coding and recoding of hypothesis information was studied with college students and third, fifth, and seventh graders. Deficiencies in young children's ability to code, but not recode, contributes to their less efficient performance on discrimination problems. (DP)

Performance was consistently higher for pictures than for words, and this difference was unaffected by age, response mode, or presentation paradigm. (Author)

Discrimination learning set performance was examined in preschool children as a function of age and number of trials per problem. Subjects were 120 children three, four, five, and six years old. (MP)