Tested in two studies 4- to 7-year-olds' face recognition by manipulating the faces' configural and featural information. Found that even with only a single 5-second exposure, most children could use configural and featural cues to make identity judgments. Repeated exposure and feedback improved others' performance. Even proficient memories were…

In this article we describe a new classroom exercise for introducing the actor-observer bias in social perception. We describe 2 experiments that compared our new technique (which involves resolving interpersonal dilemmas for oneself and another) with a previously established technique (judging the applicability of traits for oneself and another).…

Recent research suggests that outcome additivity pretraining modulates blocking in human causal learning. However, the existing evidence confounds outcome additivity and outcome maximality. Here the authors present evidence for the influence of presenting information about outcome maximality (Experiment 1) and outcome additivity (Experiment 2) on…

Research suggests that, using representations from object-based attention, infants can represent only 3 individuals at a time. For example, infants successfully represent 1, 2, or 3 hidden objects, but fail with 4 ("Developmental Science" 6 (2003) 568), and a similar limit is seen in adults' tracking of multiple objects (see "Cognitive Psychology"…

Interest regarding neural information processing in autism is growing because atypical perceptual abilities are a characteristic feature of persons with autism. Central to our review is how characteristic perceptual abilities, referred to as "perceptual signatures," can be used to suggest a neural etiology that is specific to autism. We review…

Several studies have reported that individuals with autism and Asperger's syndrome show a local processing bias on tasks involving features and configurations. This study assessed whether this bias results from differences in the perception of features or a cognitive bias to attend to features in autism as a consequence of a deficit in attending…

Two processes have been hypothesized to underlie improvement in perception: attunement and calibration. These processes were examined in a dynamic touch paradigm in which participants were asked to report the lengths of unseen, wielded rods differing in length, diameter, and material. Two experiments addressed whether feedback informs about the…

How do infants identify the psychological actors in their environments? Three groups of 12-month-old infants were tested for their willingness to encode a simple approach behavior as goal-directed as a function of whether it was performed by (1) a human hand, (2) a morphologically unfamiliar green object that interacted with a confederate and…

Managing the pedagogical aspects of the "computational turn" that is occurring within the Humanities in general and the disciplines associated with cognitive science and neuroscience in particular, first implies facing the challenge of introducing students to computation. This paper presents what has proven to be an efficient approach to bringing…

This study examined middle and high school students' perceptions of a weeklong science experience with nanotechnology and atomic force microscopy. Through an examination of student self assessments and their writing, the study allowed us to examine some of the issues that may contribute to discrepancies that are seen between European-American and…

Twenty-two children ranging in age from 2 to 3 years were tested on their abilities to apply weight and distance rules to the balance scale. This study was performed to test the prediction that 2-year-olds would be able to understand either a weight rule or a distance rule, but not be able to integrate the two. The sample group was instructed in…

Children's ability to recognize unfamiliar faces shows an unusual developmental trend: performance improves from 6 to 11 years, a temporary regression occurs at 12 years, and then recovery leads to adult-level performance. The first study described in this paper tested 80 children 5 to 11 years of age on a face-matching and recognition task.…

Reports a study investigating the relationship between cognitive styles and the preschool child's use of play areas in nursery schools, using daily observation and two tests of analytic perceptual ability. (ED)