Time perception is important for many aspects of human behavior, and a large literature documents that adults represent intervals and that their ability to discriminate temporal intervals is ratio dependent. Here we replicate a recent study by vanMarle and Wynn (2006 ) that used the visual habituation paradigm and demonstrated that temporal…

Longitudinal data gathered on 24 children at 51 months of age and at earlier ages suggest that children currently characterized as faster habituators, in terms of first fixation data, may be somewhat advanced cognitively compared to slower habituators. (Author/DB)

This paper reports a study carried out with 14 children (ranging in age from 2.8 to 3.5 years) which investigated children's concepts of difference. Pairs of small objects differing on a number of dimensions were presented to the children. As each pair of objects was presented, children were asked to select the object that was…

The paper reviews contributions of J. Piaget and others to the understanding of perception's importance in the cognitive development of mentally retarded children. The effects of poor discrimination learning on IQ scores are noted. (CL)

Two experiments investigated the role of children's spontaneous conceptual "biases" in pictorial discrimination learning. The results suggested that such biases may serve either to facilitate or to interfere with discrimination learning. Moreover, in each experiment, age by treatment interactions revealed that in comparison to the behavior of…

This study attempted to determine the functional components of rehearsal strategies in children's discrimination learning. When a discrimination list was given without rehearsal instructions, ability to discriminate situational frequencies predicted performance. Without rehearsal strategy, subjects' ability to discriminate between previous usage…

Research supported by a U.S. Public Health Service fellowship grant and by grant No. 01368-04 from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

Contemporary research findings in the fields of perceptual psychology and neurology of the human brain that are directly related to the study of visual communication are reviewed and briefly discussed in this paper. Specifically, the paper identifies those major research findings in visual perception that are relevant to the study of visual…

Six groups of nursery schoolers, kindergarteners, and first graders balanced for sex were trained and tested on a series of discrimination learning and transposition problems. (Author)

The relationships among the perception, representation, and construction of series are examined within a model of the acquisition of seriation abilities. The model is then related to two experiments with three-, four- and five-year-olds. The key feature of the model is the delineation of parallels among developmental changes in three arenas:…

One control group and eight experimental groups, each composed of 12 first grade children, participated in this experiment. It was designed to investigate the effects of frequency of reinforcement and repeated evaluation of stimuli on the conditioning of preferences. Each child participated in the experiment for seven consecutive school days. The…

Reexamines the traditional role of observation in science and science education. Proposes that since observation is based on some view of the world, it is not innocent and unbiased, but theory-dependent. Discusses possible implications for the science curriculum when reconsidering the role and status of observation in science. (TW)