The authors devised a prestimulus-probe method to assess the allocation of attention as a function of participants' top-down expectancies concerning distractor and target locations. Participants performed the flanker task, and distractor locations remained fixed. On some trials, instead of the flanker display, either 2 simultaneous dots or a…

Real-world situations involve attending to spatially extended objects, often under conditions of motion and high processing load. The present experiments investigated such processing by requiring observers to attentionally track a number of long, moving lines. Concurrently, observers responded to sporadic probes as a measure of the distribution of…

When testing between spotlight and activity distribution models of visual attention, D. LaBerge, R. L. Carlson, J. K. Williams, and B. G. Bunney (1997) used an experimental paradigm in which targets are embedded in 3 brief displays. This paradigm, however, may be confounded by retinal eccentricity effects and saccadic eye movements. When the…

This study explored whether the reported inability of newborns to perceive object unity could result from the limited abilities of newborns to recognize the correspondence between 2 stimuli that were identical except for the presence or absence of an occluder. Five experiments were carried out using a visual habituation technique. The results of…

The authors examined how visual selection mechanisms may relate to developing cognitive functions in infancy. Twenty-two 3-month-old infants were tested in 2 tasks on the same day: perceptual completion and visual search. In the perceptual completion task, infants were habituated to a partly occluded moving rod and subsequently presented with …

The paper studies whether visuospatial working memory (VSWM) and, specifically, recall of sequential-spatial information, can be improved by metacognitive training. Twenty-two fourth-grade children were involved in seven sessions of sequential-spatial memory training, while twenty-four children attended lessons given by their teacher. The…

The authors model the neural mechanisms underlying spatial cognition, integrating neuronal systems and behavioral data, and address the relationships between long-term memory, short-term memory, and imagery, and between egocentric and allocentric and visual and ideothetic representations. Long-term spatial memory is modeled as attractor dynamics…

A main aim of this study was to test the claim that individuals with Williams syndrome have selectively impaired memory for spatial as opposed to visual information. The performance of 16 individuals with Williams syndrome (six males, 10 females; mean age 18y 7mo [SD 7y 6mo], range 9y 1mo-30y 7mo) on tests of short-term memory for item and…

A long-standing issue in the study of how people acquire visual information centers around the scheduling and deployment of attentional resources: Is the process serial, or is it parallel? A substantial empirical effort has been dedicated to resolving this issue. However, the results remain largely inconclusive because the methodologies that have…

This study investigated associations between infants' prelinguistic communicative behaviors at 9 months and their communication and language performance at 12 and 18 months. The inclusion of both hearing (N=19) and deaf (N=16) infants in the study allowed identification of effects related to the receptive communication modality (vision versus…

Television has the ability to present information in two sensory channels simultaneously. Well-constructed dual-channel messages have great power to facilitate remembering and understanding, but poorly constructed ones have the power to confuse. Researchers' descriptions of audio/video combinations were compared with those of audience members and…

Grade level norms were developed, based on a sample of 678 elementary school students, for various error scores of the Benton Visual Retention Test. Norms were also developed for 201 normal children, 58 minimal brain dysfunction children, and 101 educable mentally retarded children. In both the copying mode and the memory mode, most errors were…

The directory includes descriptions of over 130 developmental screening instruments for preschool and elementary aged children. The first section provides background regarding the development and use of screening programs, including the legal and social implications of screening. The second section discusses the criteria (administration,…

This experiment compared retarded and normal subjects at different developmental levels on visual (V) and haptic (H) matching tasks. Systematic observations of variables known to have developmentally linked effects on accuracy, including stimulus complexity and haptic exploratory search style, were made. Seventeen mentally retarded subjects, with…

Several researchers have attempted to measure sequencing and integration in the decoding process in an effort to isolate some independent variables that may contribute to reading retardation, but most have measured the ability of children to manipulate nonverbal material. It is unclear whether nonverbal tests measure the same processes involved in…