It is widely assumed that children with autism have a diminished understanding of the perception-knowledge relationship, as a specific manifestation of a theory of mind (ToM) impairment. However, such a conclusion may not be justified on the basis of previous studies, which have suffered from significant methodological weaknesses. The current…

Challenges conclusions about infants' cognitive processing from prior research in favor of the importance of perceptual processes and the effects of stimulus novelty and familiarization. Considers problems with the two-test habituation design of earlier studies and proposes a new methodology that eliminates those problems. Describes a study the…

Very little cognitive development research has been done among African children, and most of the completed studies have relied on "translated" versions of Western test materials that are inappropriate to the African milieu. This paucity of research has had two affects: (1) rural African children have been represented as somewhat less…

The concept of consciousness played a central role in Vygotsky's research and theory. Unfortunately, with the advent of behaviorism, consciousness fell into disfavor. One of the major obstacles in studying consciousness is that there is no single acceptable definition of the term. Various researchers have dealt with five different aspects of…

Research involving eye movement monitoring can help in understanding the nature of the mental processes involved in reading, how these develop as one learns to read, and what processing strategies or characteristics are more common in those children who fail to show normal progress in learning to read. First, eye movement records show that the…

Function of attention in infants is explored. Assuming (1) that infants respond differently to novel situations than to familiar ones; (2) that the infant's pattern of response is a partial reflection of the process of acquiring a perceptual memory of the stimulus, and (3) that sex differences may occur in the rate of habituation, 120 infants…