Development of the relation between skills of visual and auditory pattern classification was studied at the second grade, sixth grade, and adult age levels using visual and auditory representations of the same abstract information. Results showed evidence of common processing of pattern class structure for the modalities, patterns, prototypes, and…

A study of 1,423 respondents in northwest Wisconsin shows that age, education, and place of residence appear to account for the variation in environmental concern, with no significant remaining effect accounted for by any of the types of recreation considered by Dunlap and Heffernan in their 1975 study. (Author/JC)

Investigates multiple trends in perceptual development of kindergarten, second grade, and fifth grade children who performed a speeded card sorting task with spatially integrated versus spatially separated dimensions. Results strongly support the hypothesis that there are developmental differences in perceived structure as well as ability to…

Fourth- and fifth-grade learning-disabled and nondisabled children were shown cartoon faces and required to learn which faces exemplified criterial attribute (analytic) and family resemblance (holistic) concept category membership. Children performed equally well on criterial attribute tasks, but learning-disabled children did less well on family…

Examines kindergartners' and second graders' knowledge of concept attribute importance and the children's use of this knowledge to categorize. (HOD)

Students in grades two, four, six, and college sorted abstract visual patterns that varied both in amount of contour and in type of visual organization (unstructured, simple symmetries, multiple symmetries, and rotational). Results suggested that children attend to both amount of contour and visual organization, but that attention to visual…

Explored the effects of sorting methods upon the content of children's constructs. Results indicated that dyadic sorting and free response methods of construct elicitation differentially affect the types of constructs produced. (Author/BL)

Three studies illustrate interaction between encoding processes and organizational activity. Results indicate that encoding processes can have powerful effects upon recall performance. (BJD)

Reports that form matching increased with age both in number of subjects with reliable preferences and in strength of preferences, but that at all ages form matches predominated. (Author/DR)

To determine whether infants can form face expression categories, groups of infants 18 to 24 weeks old, along with those 30 weeks old, were habituated by the infant control procedure to photographs of four different female faces, each with an identical expression (happiness or surprise). Results are discussed in terms of age and sex differences.…

Investigates why children under eight years of age show categorical clustering above chance expectations in free recall, when such organization does not correlate with recall. Six-year-old children and adults were tested for memory of 24 pictures of categorizable items. Proportion of items recalled in category strings and number of strings of each…

Results support the hypothesis that certain classification skills underlie two types of role-taking ability: (1) in which children were asked how another child would think a cartoon ended if shown only the beginning; and (2) in which children were asked how another child would think a cartoon began if shown only the end. (Author/DB)

The results of three experiments showed that: (1) children from 20 to 32 months of age are able to identify basic-level, conceptual, and complementary relationships; (2) objects are responded to more effectively than pictures; and (3) both perceptual and verbal-symbolic processes are important in matching and identifying stimuli. (JMB)

Infants were familiarized with plastic animals from one of two categories (land or sea) that were judged similar or variable by adults. Infants were then tested with novel animals from the same or a different category. Thirteen-month-olds in the similar familiarization condition dishabituated to novel animals of a different category and, to a…

Nine experiments examined 6- to 10-month-olds' formation of an abstract category representation for "between." Findings indicated that older, but not younger infants, could form an abstract category representation for "between" when performing in an object-variation version of the between categorization task. Six- to…