Two studies examined whether infants' category discrimination in an object-examination task was based solely on an ad hoc analysis of perceptual similarities among the experimental stimuli. Findings indicated that 10- to 11-month- olds' responses varied systematically only with the presence of a category change, but not with the degree of…

Two studies assessed the gaze following of 12-, 14-, and 18-month-olds. Findings indicated that infants at all ages looked at the adult's target more when the adult turned to the target with open eyes than when the adult turned with closed eyes. Additional evidence suggested that infants were not simply responding to adult head turning, but were…

Four experiments tested the hypothesis that the importance of linguistic labels for young children's conceptual organization stems from a privileged processing status of auditory input over visual input. Findings indicated that when auditory and visual stimuli were presented separately, 4-year-olds were likely to process both kinds of stimuli,…

Three experiments investigated 2- to 6-month-olds' perception of the continuity of an object trajectory that was briefly occluded. Results across experiments provided little evidence of veridical responses to trajectory occlusion in the youngest infants, but by 6 months, perception completion was more robust. Results suggest that perceptual…

Explores theories that underlie thinking concerning art education. Focuses on the importance of the process of children's looking at pictures and reviews critical studies on the topic. Also considers numerous aspects of Rudolph Arnheim's theories about the processes of seeing and thinking. (BG)

Two antithetical views of the sense-making potential of young children are explored: the Piagetian egocentric view and the sociocentric view. The article suggests that empirical research demonstrates socially construed perspective-taking tasks do not show the young child to be egocentric, but sociocentric. (IAH)

Describes study conducted to assess the ability of first grade students to interpret and use computer-generated pictures. Differences in physical attributes between computer-generated and traditional picture formats and their effect on children's ability to interpret and process information contained in the pictures are discussed. (six references)…

Comparison of 80 beginning first graders, half receiving phonics instruction and half receiving whole word instruction, found, for both groups, those above grade level in reading excelled in phonological recoding and application of grapheme-phoneme correspondence rules while those below grade level applied visual-orthographic knowledge more than…

A structured system of visual features is seen to parallel the propositional hierarchy of operations usually associated with the parsing of algebraic expressions. Women more than men were found to depend on these visual cues. Possible causes and consequences are discussed. Subjects were secondary and college students. (Author/DC)

Discussion of screen layout design for computer assisted instruction focuses on the perceptions of the viewers. Combinations of text format design variables that facilitate specific learning processes are investigated; evaluative criteria for text displays are discussed; individual and group perceptions are analyzed; and future research topics are…

Three methods by which hearing adults process speechread information are discussed: selective adaptation, immediate memory, and repetition priming. Also discussed are mental representations of speech by hearing-impaired and hearing children, infants' responses to speechread stimuli compared to other stimuli, infants' speechreading of a foreign…

Hearing-impaired speechreaders use linguistic context to compensate for the poor visibility of some speech movements. Constraints on spoken language enhance speechreading performance and help compensate for the paucity of sensory data. The largest effects come from linguistic constraints imposed by sentence context--syntactic, semantic, and…

Discusses how use of photography in early childhood classrooms enhances visual literacy. Describes how to use photographs in the daily routine to involve parents, build children's identity, and enrich all areas of the curriculum. Also describes use of video cameras in the classroom. (HTH)

Investigates the dominance of global versus local visual properties in four-month-old infants as a function of individual differences in fixation duration. Suggests that long-looking infants process visual information more slowly than short-looking infants, and there may be qualitative differences in the manner in which the two groups of infants…

Explores cognitive development in early childhood education and examines four kinds of prevailing misconceptions in the light of recent evidence: (1) infants and very young children are limited to sensorimotor cognition; (2) young children's cognition is animistic; (3) young children's thought is egocentric; and (4) young children can think only…