Developmental trends in dichhaptic lateralization

Two studies on developmental trends in dichhaptic lateralization for nonlinguistic stimuli were conducted on school-aged children. Study 1 included 60 students in Grades 1, 5, and 9. Study 2 included 200 students from Grades 2, 4, 6, 8, and 10. Both studies showed significant age-related increases in over-all dichhaptic accuracy. In Study 2 a significant left-hand advantage for all subjects as well as an over-all advantage for boys were noted. Significant interactions indicated different developmental trends for boys and girls but did not show clear patterns in the development of lateralization.     

Developmental color perception.

The purpose of this research is to extend the investigation of surface color perception to several age levels. The 108-item color perception test, originally used with young children, employs six Munsell hue matrices divided into nine combinations each of low, mid, and high chroma and low, mid, and high value across two levels of hue difficulty. The pattern of error results are the same across the age groups comprising kindergartners, fifth graders, high school sophomores, nonartist adults, and professional artists: the lower the chroma and value, the higher the error rate; the higher the chroma and value, the lower the error rate. In hues, green and red are most difficult; orange and yellow are easiest. The frequency of error is linear with respect to age: the younger the group, the higher the error. The latency data differ with respect to age: adults are slowest, followed by kindergartners and fifth graders. High school sophomores are the fastest. The remaining latency results parallel the error results: the lower the chroma and value, the longer the latency and the more difficult the hue, the longer the latency. A set of surface color perception rules are generated.     

Developmental trends in the appraisal of anxiety-provoking situations

Empirical results on the appraisal of anxiety-provoking situations are integrated with general findings on perceptual and cognitive growth. It was hypothesized that younger teenagers would appraise relations between anxiety-provoking situations on the basis of manifest and perceptually salient characteristics of the situations more so than would older teenagers, whereas the latter group would view relations predominantly on the basis of latent, anticipatory qualities. The hypothesis was tested with a similarity rating method designed to enable subjects to rate similarity between situations both from manifest and latent situation characteristics. The results supported the hypothesis. Implications of results for stability of cross-situational behavior was discussed.     

Developmental trends in cue utilization for attributional judgements

Fourth through twelfth graders of both sexes were tested for developmental trends in making causal attributions for success and failure and in using past history, social comparison, and importance information in making their attributional judgements. Results suggested that basic information processing rules had already developed by the fourth grade but that children continue to develop and become more consistent in applying these rules. Sex differences indicated that girls were more defensive generally in not taking responsibility for their outcomes by attributing them externally.     

Developmental trends in the understanding of perceptual adaptation

In the first of three studies, kindergartners, third graders, and sixth graders were questioned to determine whether they comprehend five types of perceptual adaptation or contrast effects. The results indicated little consistency among kindergartners, but there were strong improvements by the third-grade level, and at the sixth-grade level almost all of the children were showing perfect performance, demonstrating comprehension of the five forms of perceptual adaptation. In the second and third studies, children and adults were placed in a situation in which adaptation to temperature and weight could occur, and they were asked to predict subsequent perceptions. Correct performance in these studies generally occurred at later ages than in Study 1 with even college students showing incorrect performance in some cases. However, the age trends shifted quite markedly depending upon the nature and structure of the task. The results were consistent with a theory stressing the relation of early formed schemas in the form of memory traces of experiences to later appearing and more abstract schemas. The results show the importance of studying older children when considering developing theories of mind.     

Developmental changes in the perception of adult facial age

The author studied children's (aged 5-16 years) and young adults' (aged 18-22 years) perception and use of facial features to discriminate the age of mature adult faces. In Experiment 1, participants rated the age of unaltered and transformed (eyes, nose, eyes and nose, and whole face blurred) adult faces (aged 20-80 years). In Experiment 2, participants ranked facial age sets (aged 20-50, 20-80, and 50-80 years) that had varying combinations of older and younger facial features: eyes, noses, mouths, and base faces. Participants of all ages attended to similar facial features when making judgments about adult facial age, although young children (aged 5-7 years) were less accurate than were older children (aged 9-11 years), adolescents (aged 13-16 years), and young adults when making facial age judgments. Young children were less sensitive to some facial features when making facial age judgments.     

Developmental trends in children's component selection

A new method is introduced for assessing children's component selection—i.e., the disposition to attend to a single feature of multifaceted stimuli. Eight-year-old children were found to exercise component selection to a lesser degree than 4-year-olds; while children at both age levels attended primarily to one stimulus component (shape), the older children showed a moderate amount of attention to a secondary redundant feature (color) as well. However, a comparable age difference in attention deployment was not observed when a single stimulus dimension (shape) was “relevant” in two variant tasks. These results imply a developmentally increasing ability to distinguish between conditions in which attending to redundant stimulus information can and cannot be useful. That this ability undergoes little further development beyond age 8 was suggested in a second experiment with 8- and 12-year-olds in which the three tasks produced relatively similar developmental trends in performance.     

Developmental trends in recall of central and incidental auditory material

An auditory recall task, involving central and incidental stimuli and designed to correspond to that used in visual selective attention studies, was developed and presented to second-, fourth-, sixth-, and eighth-graders. There were significant differences in favor of older compared to younger Ss and girls compared to boys. In addition, Ss performed better when animals were the relevant and foods the irrelevant stimuli than vice versa. The nature of the developmental increase in auditory recall of central vs incidental stimuli demonstrated in this task was discussed in terms of developmental trends found in the visual modality. The sex differences and differences found for the animals vs foods condition were discussed with regard to differential short-term memory strategies.