Studies were designed to test the prediction that spatial search strategies in infants may be influenced by locomotor experience. The pattern of findings suggests that infants with efficient modes of locomotion are more likely than others to profit from the experiences generated by locomotion. (RJC)

Studied the effects of adult intervention on 10-month-old infants' level of attention to objects. The overall duration of infant attention increased during medium intervention when the duration was compared to that of the control group. Low attending infants attended more in medium and high intervention, while high attending infants were…

Investigated Japanese children's understanding of the difference between real and apparent emotion. Children aged four to six years listened to and answered questions about stories in which the protagonist masked strong emotions. Results showed six-year-olds understood real versus apparent emotion more systematically than did four-year-olds. (SKC)

Findings indicate that infants can detect regularity in spatiotemporal series; will develop expectancies for events in the series; and will act on the basis of those expectancies even when their actions have no effect on the stimulus events. (PCB)

The study examined the cartoon humor comprehension of 30 learning disabled and 30 non-handicapped boys in two age groups, eight- and twelve-year-olds. Significant main effects were found indicating a developmental lag in the cognitive structure necessary for understanding humor in the learning disabled subjects. (Author/DB)

The relationships among decentration, decontexturalization, and integration in the same children were investigated to reexamine sequences of actor-object play for the purpose of revising and extending previous models. The results contribute to the understanding of complex play by establishing the variability of component relationships and…

Five studies investigated children's perception of scale and contour in melodies. It was found that young children can detect key transposition changes in familiar and unfamiliar melodies and are sensitive to melodic contour over transformations that preserve it, yet distinguish spontaneously between melodies with the same contour and different…

Reviews the literature on the effects of summer programs, and offers a reinterpretation of the role of summer learning in cognitive development. (PCB)

Briefly reviews research concerned with symbolic development in children born prematurely. Focus is on the complex process of sorting out the effects of biological maturation and environmental experience in the study of the emergent processes, and examining the effects of biological risk and environmental opportunity in determining developmental…

The ontological problem is "what exists?" The answer regarding the part of consciousness which is related to left hemisphere is that only individual discrete objects exist; objects are regarded one at a time. The answer regarding the part of consciousness which is related to right hemisphere is only comprehensive entities exist; each…

Discusses five- and six-year-old children's conceptions of life and death. Children were questioned about animals, plants, and inanimate objects. The most errors occurred when children judged inanimate objects; the fewest when they judged animals. The order of questions about either life or death significantly influenced children's responses. (NH)

Reported are two studies which describe the early development in children of the ability to consider every one of an array of instances. Taken together with other recent studies, the data reveal early development in preschool children of a fundamental, general problem solving skill. (PCB)

Compared Erwin's Scale of Intellectual Development (SID) and Allen's Paragraph Completion Instrument to enhance understanding of intellectual development according to the Perry scheme. Indicated that the SID-Dualism subscale held the most promise for discriminating between students at various levels of intellectual development, as measured by the…

Children (N=32) between 6 and 12 years of age were given Derry Death Concept Scale, Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, and subtests from Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Revised. Correlations indicated that level of death concept development was related to age and verbal-conceptual mental development. Socioeconomic status and death-related…

The hypothesis testing abilities of 15 language impaired and 15 normally developing children matched for mental age were investigated using discrimination-learning tasks. Findings indicated the impaired children performed poorer than non-impaired children especially on the nonexplicit problems suggesting the deficits may be related to difficulties…