Abstract The present study investigated children's understanding that an object's history may increase its significance, an appreciation that underpins the concept of "historical authenticity" (i.e., the idea that an item's history determines its true identity, beyond its functional or material qualities, leading people to value real…

Children and adults often encounter counterintuitive claims that defy their perceptions. We examined factors that influence children's acceptance of such claims. Children ages 3-6 years were shown familiar objects (e.g., a rock), were asked to identify the objects, and were then told that each object was something else (e.g., that the rock…

Recent studies in neuroimagery and cognitive psychology support the view of sensory-motor based knowledge: when processing an object concept, neural systems would re-enact previous experiences with this object. In this experiment, a conceptual switching cost paradigm derived from Pecher, Zeelenberg, and Barsalou (2003, 2004) was used to…

Fifteen autistic children (four to six years old) were assessed for visual self-recognition ability, as well as for object permanence and gestural imitation. It was found that 13 of 15 autistic children showed evidence of self-recognition. Consistent relationships were suggested between self-cognition and object permanence but not between…

This study compared the regulation of cognitive activity in 30 children (ages 15 to 95 months) with autism or mental retardation matched for global, verbal, and nonverbal developmental ages. Testing on tasks of object permanence indicated that the autistic children had a pervasive difficulty in maintenance set, made more perseverative errors, and…

The relationship between the development of object permanence and early words was studied in three young boys, two totally blind from birth and one severely visually impaired. Subjects acquired early words within the age range for sighted children but their word usage was different. The two blind children were delayed in their development of…

This study examined the effect of a salient multimodal reinforcer on object search performance of 9 children with Down's syndrome (24-56 months old). Attentional deficits of children with mental retardation or at risk for delay influenced their performance. Contingency learning of children with Down's syndrome may be affected by the attentional…

Three types of overgeneral uses of object names by young children were identified. Production data from 10 children were obtained using a standardized method of recording utterance contexts. Results showed that, like adults, children's object categories applied to objects of particular kinds. Most overgeneral uses were attributable to…