The hypothesis that perceptual development proceeds from less to greater dimensional separability was tested by giving a speeded classification task to first and fourth graders. Results supported the hypothesis that development proceeds toward greater flexibility of attention rather than simply toward increasing separability. (Author/DB)

This study examined the relation between number conservation and attention to number, density, and length or area in 86 kindergarteners and 18 third graders. (Author/SB)

A total of 174 first, second, and third graders were tested to examine the relation between perceptual salience and cognitive style. The results indicated that implusives made more errors than reflectives only on trials requiring the use of the least salient dimension and that these performance differences decreased with age. (JMB)

A matching task was presented to 120 subjects from 6 to 20 years of age to investigate the relative influence of dimensional salience and salience of variability on problem solving. The task included four dimensions: form, color, number, and position. (LLK)

Results of a study of the pictorial preferences of seven-, nine-, and eleven-year-old children of two cultures indicated that "soft contours were generally preferred in both cultures, as were natural images--with the exception that older American girls prefer geometric elements. (JM)

Investigates effects of perceptual salience and specific orientation values on 16 kindergarten and fourth-grade children executing a speeded sorting task. Kindergarten results supported the cognitive processing prediction that orientation sorting times would vary as a function of condition, but no differences were obtained for the fourth-grade…

The hypothesis that overall-similarity relations structure both adults' and children's classifications of heterogeneous objects (objects that differ in a variety of ways) was supported in two experiments. When objects varied simultaneously on many dimensions, adults and children constructed classifications that maximized within-category similarity…

The study reported here examined the use of color terms by 36 male and female students in kindergarten through fifth grade in a suburban New York City school. The children were asked to label colors using the fanciest color term they could. The only significant difference found was between younger females and older females, tentatively indicating…

Short-term memory recognition scores and strategies were investigated in 10 learning disabled and 10 educable mentally retarded (EMR) students (10-13 years old). (Author/CL)

Children's use of the middle concept was assessed in two developmental studies. Experiment 1, with kindergarten through fifth-grade students, showed marked improvement in the mastery of the middle concept across elementary grades. In Experiment 2, discrimination pretraining with two nonoverlapping stimulus sets transferred to the novel test…

The present study examines the relationship between alternation behavior and performance, and in addition, the effects of reinforcement configuration and relevant dimension upon the use of alternation strategies in probability learning. Also investigated is the hypothesis that children's errors at terminal levels of performance in a two-choice…

The effects of making ratings of idea importance, saliency, or textual imagery on story recall was investigated with 180 students (second and sixth grade normal students and mildly mentally retarded adolescents). Ss in eighteen groups attempted to recall a story presented auditorially and in print either before rating on a textual variable…

This study was designed to answer the following question: which of four commonly used art styles (photographic, representational, cartoon, and expressionistic), employed in children's tradebooks, would first, second, and third grade children prefer when (a) pictures only were viewed, and (b) text content (informational or fanciful) accompanied…

The frequencies of consistent, mixed, and inconsistent lateral preference patterns in 648 elementary school age children were examined. No differences were found in IQ, reading, arithmetic, or spelling achievement scores among the three groups of children, at any age or for either sex. (Author)

Investigates age differences in selective attention in a coded visual search task where subjects were given different types of information about target location before trial onset. (Author/SS)