Object substitution masking (OSM) is said to occur when a perceptual object is hypothesized that is mismatched by subsequent sensory evidence, leading to a new hypothesized object being substituted for the first. For example, when a brief target is accompanied by a longer lasting display of nonoverlapping mask elements, reporting of target…

This study investigated infants' differential responding to novel and familiar stimuli after familiarization in a different sensory modality. Results showed that infants gain information about the shape of objects from their oral experience with them and that this information can be transferred to the visual modality. (Author/JMB)

It was hypothesized that Piaget's argument on behalf of the reorganization of cognitive processes would gain empirical support from a color/form, matching similar objects problem for 52 6-year-olds from a variety of socioeconomic backgrounds. (Author/MS)

Four experiments assessed converging aspects of four-month-old infants' perceptions of visual patterns. Results together corroborate and extend previous findings that vertical symmetry has a special status in early perceptual development and that infants can perceive pattern wholes. (Author/AS)

Results reveal a relationship between two previously explored areas of inquiry: orientation errors in copying and preferences for the orientation of nonrealistic shapes. (Author)

Tested infants' remembrance of the orientations and angular relations of line segments. In one experiment, infants "dishabituated" to a change in orientation but not a change in angle. In two further experiments, infants familiar with either an acute or obtuse angle gave strong novelty preferences to a different angle. (BC)

The authors conducted 3 experiments to explore the roles of curvature, density, and relative proximity in the perceptual organization of ambiguous dot patterns. To this end, they developed a new family of regular dot patterns that tend to be perceptually grouped into parallel contours, dot-sampled structured grids (DSGs). DSGs are similar to the…

Analysis of 40 first-grade children's performance on two discrimination learning problems revealed that children do transfer dimensional information between the visual and tactual modalities. (Author/JMB)

The effects of stimulus dimension and mode of exploration on preschool children's responses to pattern meanings and unusual uses tasks of original thinking were studied. The 3D tasks generated more responses overall. Visual and haptic exploration combined with 3D was the only condition studied to meet all criteria for construct validity.…

Two experiments were conducted in order to determine whether there are differences between well and malnourished infants in the extent to which they prefer novel stimuli. (MP)

Stroop dilution is the reduction of the Stroop effect in the presence of a neutral word. It has been attributed to competition for attention between the color word and neutral word, to competition between all stimuli in the visual field, and to perceptual interference. Five experiments tested these accounts. The critical manipulation was whether…

This study followed the development of visual preferences in a single infant from birth to 10 weeks of age. The stimuli used were 5 x 10 item arrays of squares of lines in which a 3 x 3 target matrix of the other figure type (line or square) was embedded. The direction of first fixation and the total time spent looking at each side were determined…

Reports two experiments which examined developmental changes in the patterns of preference for varying degrees of perspective while controlling for the station point used in viewing. Subjects were 28 preschool children (age four years), 23 elementary school students (age six years) and 30 college students from introductory psychology classes. (MP)

A visual search task was used to assess developmental changes in elementary school children's selective attention to specified portions of a visual display. (Author/SB)

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)