This study investigates the ability of 6-month-old infants to attend to the continuous properties of a set of discrete entities. Infants were habituated to dot arrays that were constant in cumulative surface area yet varied in number for small (less than 4) or large (greater than 3) sets. Results revealed that infants detected a 4-fold (but not…

Behavioral studies show that infants are capable of discriminating the number of objects or events in their environment, while also suggesting that number discrimination in infancy may be ratio-dependent. However, due to limitations of the dependent measures used with infant behavioral studies, the evidence for ratio dependence falls short of the…

In previous studies, children disoriented in small enclosures used room shape, but not wall colors, to find hidden objects. Their reorientation was said to depend solely on a "geometric module" informationally encapsulated with respect to color. We argue that previous studies did not fully evaluate children's use of color owing to a bias in the…

This study used a learning-set task to assess the ability of four 10-month-old infants to acquire an object discrimination. (Author/JMB)

To determine why the familiarization-novelty paradigm tends to underestimate the ability of infants under 4 months of age to detect unidimensional differences between stimuli, groups of 14- and 20-week-olds were given unidimensional discrimination problems of varying difficulty under conditions of brief and prolonged familiarization. (Author/JMB)

Forty-eight four-month-old infants were tested in a habituation-dishabituation discrimination paradigm using vertically symmetrical, horizontally symmetrical, and asymetrical forms. Results suggest that babies respond to "goodness of organization" rather than to details unique to particular symmetrical patterns. (Author/RH)

Two groups of rats were trained in a symbolic delayed matching-to-sample task with a 0-s delay to discriminate sample stimuli that consisted of sequences of tone bursts. For one group, sequences varied in number with total sequence duration controlled. For the other group, total sequence duration, sum of the tone durations, and sum of the gap…

While many studies have investigated duration discrimination in human adults and in nonhuman animals, few have investigated this ability in infants. Here, we report findings that 6-month-old infants are able to discriminate brief durations, and, as with other animal species, their discrimination function is characterized by Weber's Law:…

A go/no-go conditioned head-turn paradigm was used to examine the abilities of 6- and 12-month-olds to discriminate changes in temporal grouping and their perception of absolute and relative timing information when listening to patterns of white-noise bursts. (Author/RH)

An infant control habituation-recovery procedure was used to study 3-month-old infants' discrimination of sad, happy, and surprise facial expressions. (Author/JMB)

Examines discrimination of geometric shapes by three-month-old infants who were presented with geometric stimuli moving laterally at two different velocities. Finds that subjects discriminate between geometric forms at velocities that, according to previous findings, might interfere with shape discrimination. Discusses the possible interactive…

The ability of preverbal infants to form and use ill-defined categories, to respond differentially to contrasting categories, and to use specific dimensions in learning these categories is examined in 20 infants 10 months of age. Results show that infants are not only capable of learning two ill-defined categories, but that they can do so with…

Six- to 7-month-old infants were tested on their ability to discriminate among three speech sounds which differed on the basis of formant-transition duration, a major cue to distinctions among stop, semivowel, and diphthong classes. (Author/PHR)

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…

Recognition memory, defined by novelty preferences, was found to vary over 4 discrimination tasks as a function of length of familiarization for 5-6-month-old infants. (ST)