Perception is not an independent, in-the-moment event. Instead, perceiving involves integrating prior expectations with current observations. How does this ability develop from infancy through adulthood? We examined how prior visual experience shapes visual perception in infants, children, and adults. Using an identical task across age groups, we…

The perirhinal cortex is known to be important for memory, but there has recently been interest in the possibility that it might also be involved in visual perceptual functions. In four experiments, we assessed visual discrimination ability and visual discrimination learning in severely amnesic patients with large medial temporal lobe lesions that…

Three experiments investigated discrimination and memory of 5.5-month-olds for videotapes of women performing different activities (blowing bubbles, brushing hair, brushing teeth) or static displays after a 1-minute and a 7-week delay. Findings demonstrate the attentional salience of actions over faces in dynamic events to 5.5-month-olds. Findings…

Three studies explore the development of discrimination and memory for symmetry in preschoolers four to six years of age. Issues addressed include the young child's ability to discriminate and reproduce symmetry, and the effects of pattern orientation and complexity on the young child's symmetry discrimination and reproduction. Results indicate…

Described are three experiments which probed children's sensitivity to structure or organization in visual patterns. Each experiment employed a different paradigm (complexity judgment, discrimination learning, recognition learning, and memory) in order to tap different aspects of children's use of structural information. Subjects were children in…

This study investigated attention to and recognition of components in compound stimuli among infants and preschoolers. Oddity tasks with preschoolers and familiarization/novelty-preference tasks with infants demonstrated successful discrimination among stimuli components on basis of edge property information. Matching tasks with preschoolers and…

This study involved fifty-eight 3-year-olds. It sought to determine whether the preschoolers could learn to discriminate visually the critical elements of shape through a program of perceptual-motor training, transfer such knowledge to similar but different shapes, and then resist the process of forgetting the critical elements. The children were…

Presented are suggestions and 330 lesson plans for the improvement of visual skills of 3-to-7-year-old perceptually handicapped children. Suggestions for the reading program include large screen presentation and use of the Language Master. Possible designs for a classroom learning center for independent learning tasks are suggested. Seven areas of…