Background: The relation between physical activity (PA), motor skills and cognitive function in children is receiving considerable attention. To transition scientific evidence into pedagogical practice, however, we need to further our understanding of which qualitative PA characteristics are best suited to stimulate motor skills and executive…

Infants' ability to mentally track the orientation of an object during a hidden rotation was investigated (N = 28 in each experiment). A toy on a turntable was fully covered and then rotated 90°. When revealed, the toy had turned with the turntable (probable event), remained at its starting orientation (improbable event in Experiment 1), or…

Prosaccade and antisaccade errors in the context of social and nonsocial stimuli were investigated in youth with autism spectrum disorder (ASD; n = 19) a matched control sample (n = 19), and a small sample of youth with obsessive compulsive disorder (n = 9). Groups did not differ in error rates in the prosaccade condition for any stimulus…

Conflicting evidence has arisen from correlational studies regarding the role of executive control functions in Theory of Mind. The current study used dual-task manipulations of executive functions (inhibition, updating and switching) to investigate the role of these control functions in mental state and non-mental state tasks. The "Eyes"…

Used event-related potentials to examine infants' ability to form representations of stimuli presented in a haptic modality and to then recognize these stimuli as familiar when the stimuli were subsequently presented in a visual modality. Found that in certain conditions infants encoded the haptically familiarized object, then transferred their…

Five experiments using the visual habitation paradigm with 158 infants demonstrated that these 10-month olds did not use property/kind information to establish representations of 2 numerically distinct objects, a finding that provided support for the object-first hypothesis. (SLD)

Forty preschoolers were directed to mentally rotate a stimulus and to discriminate the rotated stimulus from among a set of alternatives. Results are discussed in light of discrepant findings about children's kinetic imagery ability and the advisability of using this particular paradigm with young children. (Author/BS)

First and fifth graders in two IQ groupings reconstructed pictures which were variations on a prototypic picture. In subsequent recognition, children gave confidence ratings on the "oldness" of the pictures. Prototypes were recognized with most confidence. Younger and lower IQ children were less sure about noncases being "new".…

Visual behavior of infants was assessed with multiple discrimination tasks week to week from four to seven months of age. Task to task reliability was low, but attentional averages from week to week were reliable. Generally, infants with shorter fixations showed more novelty preferences, and infants' shift rate improved with age. (SKC)

In this study, 50 infants (15 to 18 months of age) were shown four different film sets in an effort to determine (1) whether infants can perceive action role reversals between an actor and recipient of the action when the direction of the action is ruled out as a cue and (2) whether infants consider only animate objects to be potential…

Examines the ability of infants to track and anticipate the final orientation of an object. Subjects were infants ranging from an average of four months to eight months old. Three experiments, with the last one as control, were carried out. Concludes that infants show some rudimentary mental rotation from four months of age. (MOK)

Pictures are often used by cognitive psychologists to investigate the development of cognitive functions. Different attributes of the picture, such as object or picture familiarity, word frequency, and age of acquisition, are known to correlate with naming latency and to affect memory, particularly retrieval processes. But without the use of…

Because understanding pictures is a significant aid to readers, this paper explores research on picture interpretation. The paper describes the complexity of the process and states that the ability to interpret pictures seems to proceed from the simple to the complex: from concrete experiences with pictures to the abstract interpretation of…

Three experiments using the same overall design were conducted to address problems associated with repeated measurement designs employed to assess retention of information in complex pictures and to assess the developmental course of schemata-guided retention efforts. Forty-eight subjects, ages 6, 10, and 20 years, were shown scenes whose forms…

Examines the development of young children's analysis of spatial patterns--specifically, hierarchical letter and geometric forms. Suggests that although children as young as four years of age demonstrated substantial analytic competence, their ability to integrate the parts of the spatial array to form a coherent whole was weaker and more easily…