Three experiments are reported on behavioral inference in children of 3 to 5 years of age. In each experiment the children learned two separate sequences of behavior which they were required to put together in the final test stage in order to obtain a reward. (MS)

Four of eight low-functioning, developmentally delayed preschool children initially failed to demonstrate expected oddity responding. In the context of a multiple baseline across-subject design, each of the previously unsuccessful children demonstrated significant increases in the percentage of correct oddity responses immediately upon…

Subjects were 359 children divided by grade (3 and 6), culture (U.S. and Indian), and sex. Hypothesis was that developmental, cross-cultural, and sex differences would be found in the perception of situational causality. All cross-cultural and developmental differences were found to be significant for U.S. children but not for Indian children. (RJ)

A discrimination reversal problem was presented to 192 children varying in age from 3 to 5 years. At the end of both the initial learning and transfer trials, probe trials were introduced to ascertain the response rule describing children's choices. (Author/SB)

Human adults are more accurate at discriminating faces from their own race than faces from another race. This "other-race effect" (ORE) has been characterized as a reflection of face processing specialization arising from differential experience with own-race faces. We examined whether 3.5-month-old infants exhibit ORE using morphed faces on which…

The study involving 85 sixth through ninth graders tested J. Torgesen's hypothesis that learning disabled (LD) children's performance deficits occur as a result of a "passive" approach to tasks rather than a cognitive processing deficit as assumed by other existing definitions. LD students were matched with nonhandicapped peers and administered…

The first part of this paper briefly describes two studies concerned with cognitive processes in children. One study examined the ability of Kindergarten and First Grade children to apply a simple rule of logical inference in order to solve a two-object discrimination problem. Specifically, the rule was of the form "if A, then not B." A second…

Twenty-seven 4-month-old infants heard a repetitive auditory rhythm, then viewed silent film of puppet opening/closing its mouth, either in the familiar rhythm or a novel rhythm. Results showed infants exposed to the novel condition watched the film longer than infants shown the familiar condition, providing evidence for auditory-visual transfer…

One hundred and sixty subjects from five age levels ranging from 3 to 20 years compared photographs of dogs (e.g., two different Great Danes or a Great Dane and a Doberman pinscher) and judged whether they were similar or different. (Author/MP)

This study with 50 adults with mental retardation, found that performance on the Facial Discrimination Task (Emotional and Age Tasks) was significantly correlated to the Cognitive Assessment System total score. Hierarchical regression analyses produced results suggesting that cognitive processes are involved in processing facial stimuli in a…

This study examined children's use of category information as a discrimination cue to avoid intrusions in recall and false alarms in recognition of items outside given categories. Forty-eight children in grades 1 and 4 were administered one of three conditions of a recognition task in which all study words were members of one of two familiar…

Replies to Gholson's commentary (PS 522 655) on the article by Coldren and Colombo in this monograph. Discusses limitations in the shift procedure methodology traditionally used in research on discrimination learning, and considers the use in future research of methodologies that can precisely decompose children's responses to feedback during…

Familiarized 6- and 8-month-olds with speech sounds from a phonetic continuum, exhibiting a bimodal or unimodal frequency distribution. Found that only infants in the bimodal condition discriminated tokens from the endpoints of the continuum. Results demonstrate that infants are sensitive to the statistical distribution of speech sounds in the…

BOTH COGNITIVELY-ORIENTED AND RESPONSE-ORIENTED THEORIES OF PERCEPTUAL LEARNING ARE DISCUSSED AND CONTRASTED WITH A STIMULUS-ORIENTED THEORY. PERCEPTUAL LEARNING IS DEFINED AS AN INCREASE IN SPECIFICITY OF DISCRIMINATION OF THE STIMULUS INPUT. THE AUTHOR DESCRIBED WHAT IS LEARNED IN PERCEPUTAL LEARNING AS () THE DISTINCTIVE FEATURES OF THINGS, (2)…