Spatial organization of distractors in visual search.

This paper investigates visual search in displays in which distractors are spatially grouped. The effect on detection of target position within a spatially grouped 2-dimensional display containing 2 distractor types were examined. The authors compared detection in grouped displays with detection in 2 kinds of control display, homogeneous (one distractor type) and ungrouped (2 distractor types), to determine whether detection in grouped displays would be more similar to efficient detection in homogeneous displays than to inefficient detection in ungrouped displays. Findings show relatively efficient detection in group displays. Detection of targets at the border of two regions where distractors are coherent is easier than can be predicted by models that do not take spatial organization into account. Thus, models of visual search need to incorporate effects of spatial organization in addition to bottom-up difference calculations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Aging and experience in the recognition of musical transpositions.

The authors examined the effects of age, musical experience, and characteristics of musical stimuli on a melodic short-term memory task in which participants had to recognize whether a tune was an exact transposition of another tune recently presented. Participants were musicians and nonmusicians between ages 18 and 30 or 60 and 80. In 4 experiments, the authors found that age and experience affected different aspects of the task, with experience becoming more influential when interference was provided during the task. Age and experience interacted only weakly, and neither age nor experience influenced the superiority of tonal over atonal materials. Recognition memory for the sequences did not reflect the same pattern of results as the transposition task. The implications of these results for theories of aging, experience, and music cognition are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Aging and the development of automaticity in visual search.

The rate of short-term memory search has previously been reported to be slower for older individuals than for college-age Ss (F. I. Craik, 1977). Current research has suggested that after extensive practice with the same population of stimuli, performance in memory-search and visual-search tasks can become "automatic," or independent of memory load. The present experiment examined age differences in the development of automatic processing in a hybrid memory-search/visual-search paradigm; 8 young (18–25 yrs old) and 8 older (61–74 yrs old) Ss participated. Although older Ss demonstrated a significantly slower rate of search, the 2 age groups shifted toward automatic processing, over practice, at equivalent rates. The slower rate of search thus represents an age-related increase in the time required to compare the memory-set items against those in a visual array, rather than a change in the mode of processing available. (20 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Selective information use in the development of search behavior.

Age differences in children's use of various sources of information about object location were examined in a study of search behavior in 3-, 4-, and 7-yr-olds. The 2 principal sources of information were general associative knowledge about the typical locations of objects (location specificity) and explicit verbal statements about object location. Age differences in the results reflected increasing utilization of the 2 sources of information when each was considered separately. More importantly, the design allowed consideration of Ss' ability to combine the information to limit search. In this respect, the findings reveal sophisticated information integration on the part of even the youngest Ss tested. At all ages, Ss were able to combine both sources of information when both were relevant and to ignore irrelevant location-specificity information when the verbal information was logically superordinate. (7 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Visual search for features and conjunctions in development.

Visual search performance was examined in 24 7–8 yr olds, 22 9–10 yr olds, 15 11–12 yr olds, and in 10 young adults (aged 23–30 yrs). Color and orientation feature searches and a conjunction search were conducted. Reaction time (RT) showed expected improvements in processing speed with age. Comparisons of RTs on target-present and target-absent trials were consistent with parallel search on the 2 feature conditions and with serial search in the conjunction condition. The RT results indicate that searches for feature arid conjunctions were treated similarly for children and adults. However, the youngest children missed more targets at the largest array sizes, most strikingly in conjunction search. Based on an analysis of speed/accuracy trade-offs, we suggest that low target-distractor discriminability leads to an undersampling of array elements, and is responsible for the high number of misses in the youngest children. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Gesture and early bilingual development.

The relationship between speech and gestural proficiency was investigated longitudinally (from 2 years to 3 years 6 months, at 6-month intervals) in 5 French-English bilingual boys with varying proficiency in their 2 languages. Because of their different levels of proficiency in the 2 languages at the same age, these children's data were used to examine the relative contribution of language and cognitive development to gestural development. In terms of rate of gesture production, rate of gesture production with speech, and meaning of gesture and speech, the children used gestures much like adults from 2 years on. In contrast, the use of iconic and beat gestures showed differential development in the children's 2 languages as a function of mean length of utterance. These data suggest that the development of these kinds of gestures may be more closely linked to language development than other kinds (such as points). Reasons why this might be so are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Beyond cognition: Expanding the search for the early roots of internalization and conscience.

J. E. Grusec and J. J. Goodnow (see record 1994-25033-001) offered a new comprehensive reformulation of discipline encounters as context for children's internalization of parental views. They focused mainly on children's social information processing and how it affects perception and acceptance of parental messages. The model seems best suited for middle childhood and adolescence. This commentary suggests additional directions in research on internalization in early childhood. It is argued that processes such as social referencing, sensitivity to standard violations, emergence of self, emotional reactions to wrongdoing, early self-conscious emotions, and self-regulation may be important antecedents and signs of internalization in the 1st 3 yrs of life. The proposed shift from cognitive to affective and self-regulatory aspects of early conscience reveals children's temperament as an important but neglected contributor to early moral development. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Spatial factors in the development of the object concept.

Conducted 2 studies in which 19 infants' understanding of spatial relations during the period following attainment of active search for hidden objects was examined. The findings of a longitudinal study indicate that infants who have recently achieved this level of object search tend to localize objects globally in relation to available landmarks. Changes in infants' search performance during the course of longitudinal testing were consistent with a shift from more global to more precise differentiation of spatial relations. The findings of a cross-sectional replication study suggest that the spatial relations which infants construct among a set of objects may vary considerably, depending on which aspect of the spatial arrangement they take as dominant. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Stages in the development of intentional search by young infants.

Piaget maintained that intentional search is preceded by a phase of transitional search in which infants remove covers but do not show intention to find the hidden object. If there is such a transitional phase, reports of search by infants as young as 5 mo are difficult to evaluate because the type of search has not been identified. Two experiments examined changes in search behavior in 38 infants at age 6, 7, and 8 mo. Exp I revealed that the majority of Ss displayed transitional search before intentional search. Exp II showed that Ss' awareness of the hidden object developed gradually; early transitional search demonstrated minimal awareness, but later transitional search revealed knowledge of the hidden object. An account of search development is given that is in close agreement with Piaget's, and caution is advised in the interpretation of studies with young infants that fail to distinguish different types of search. (16 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Spatial filtering during visual search: Evidence from human electrophysiology.

The identification of targets in visual search arrays may be improved by suppressing competing information from the surrounding distractor items. The present study provided evidence that this hypothetical filtering process has a neural correlate, the N2pc component of the event-related potential waveform. The N2pc was observed when a target item was surrounded by competing distractor items but was absent when the array could be rejected as a nontarget on the basis of simple feature information. In addition, the N2pc was eliminated when filtering was discouraged by removing the distractor items, making the distractors relevant, or making all items within an array identical. Combined with previous topographic analyses, these results suggest that attentional filtering occurs in occipital cortex under the control of feedback from higher cortical regions after a preliminary feature-based analysis of the stimulus array. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Aging and individual differences in the development of skilled memory search performance.

We examined individual differences in measures of multiple intellectual abilities and performance on a pure memory search task over 5 experimental sessions. Old (n?=?104) and young (n?=?97) participants showed expected patterns of substantial improvement in memory search intercepts and slopes in consistently mapped (CM) conditions, relative to varied mapping (VM) conditions. Initial (unskilled) CM and VM memory search was highly correlated with a Semantic Memory Access Speed factor and moderately correlated with General Intelligence. Structural equation models showed that measures of Semantic Memory Access remained a strong predictor of skilled CM search performance in both age groups despite individual differences in CM memory search performance changes. These results indicate qualitative differences in the nature of automaticity between memory search and visual search and suggest age invariance in the mechanisms determining automaticity in memory search. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Spatial constraints on learning in visual search: Modeling contextual cuing.

Predictive visual context facilitates visual search, a benefit termed contextual cuing (M. M. Chun & Y. Jiang, 1998). In the original task, search arrays were repeated across blocks such that the spatial configuration (context) of all of the distractors in a display predicted an embedded target location. The authors modeled existing results using a connectionist architecture and then designed new behavioral experiments to test the model's assumptions. The modeling and behavioral results indicate that learning may be restricted to the local context even when the entire configuration is predictive of target location. Local learning constrains how much guidance is produced by contextual cuing. The modeling and new data also demonstrate that local learning requires that the local context maintain its location in the overall global context. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cross-cultural perspectives on early development.

Observed infants in isolated subsistence-farming Indian villages in Guatemala. An absolute retardation on normative developmental milestones was noted which seemed to be a product of insufficient variety in environmental experience. However, tests of memory, perceptual analysis, and inference revealed that the 11 yr olds' scores were comparable to those of American children. It is suggested that a distinction be made between absolute level of performance on tests of universal competences and relative level of performance on tests of culturally specific abilities. Given a reasonably natural environment during the postinfancy years, infant retardation seems to have no serious effect on the attainment of the basic cognitive competences of the preadolescent. There seems to be more resiliency in psychological development than some psychologists have surmised. (29 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Risk and resilience in early mental development.

Examined mental development scores for 2 groups of at-risk twins throughout their childhood, those classified as small for gestational age (SGA), and those twins falling below 1,750 g birthweight. The Ss were recruited as newborns—about 30 new pairs were added each year—and the total sample included 450 pairs of twins. Ss were assessed using the Bayley Scales of Infant Development at age 24 mo and the WPPSI at age 6 yrs. Results show that the SGA Ss showed only a modest deficit in IQ scores as compared to the full twin Ss, and thus these small-for-date Ss did not appear to be at special risk. The Ss below 1,750 g, however, did show a very significant deficit in IQ scores throughout childhood. When the recovery patterns were examined for this group, upper SES Ss appeared to recover completely, whereas lower SES Ss remained significantly depressed. Mother's education was significantly related to recovery from 24 mo onward, which suggests that maternal intelligence plays a prominent role in determining the level of recovery. When monozygotic Ss of markedly unequal birth weight were compared, the twins who weighed less than 1,750 g attained the same level of IQ scores at 6 yrs as did their heavier co-twins. Among these genetic replicates, the initially powerful effects of low birth weight did not exert a long-term handicapping effect on mental development. (14 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cognitive theories of early gender development.

The contribution of cognitive perspectives (cognitive-developmental theory and gender schema theory) to a contemporary understanding of gender development is evaluated. Recent critiques of cognitive approaches are discussed and empirical evidence is presented to counter these critiques. Because of the centrality of early gender development to the cognitive perspective, the latest research is reviewed on how infants and toddlers discriminate the sexes and learn the attributes correlated with sex. The essence of cognitive approaches--emphasis on motivational consequences of gender concepts; the active, self-initiated view of development; and focus on developmental patterns--is highlighted and contrasted with social- cognitive views. The value of cognitive theories to the field is illustrated, and recommendations are made concerning how to construct comprehensive, integrative perspectives of gender development. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Feature analysis in early vision: Evidence from search asymmetries.

A series of search experiments tested detection of targets distinguished from the distractors by differences on a single dimension. Our aim was to use the pattern of search latencies to infer which features are coded automatically in early vision. For each of 12 different dimensions, one or more pairs of contrasting stimuli were tested. Each member of a pair played the role of target in one condition and the role of distractor in the other condition. Targets defined by larger values on the quantitative dimensions of length, number, and contrast, by line curvature, by misaligned orientation, and by values that deviated from a standard or prototypical color or shape were detected easily, whereas targets defined by smaller values on the quantitative dimensions, by straightness, by frame-aligned orientation, and by prototypical colors or shapes required slow and apparently serial search. We interpret the results as evidence that focused attention to single items or to groups is required to reduce background activity when the Weber fraction distinguishing the pooled feature activity with displays containing a target and with displays containing only distractors is too small to allow reliable discrimination. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The emergence and early development of autobiographical memory.

The authors provide a new framework that integrates autobiographical memory with other early achievements (e.g., gesturing, language, concept formation). In this theory, the emergence and early development of autobiographical memory does not require the invocation of specialized neurological or multiple memory mechanisms but rather arises as a natural consequence of developments in related domains including in the "software" that drives general memory functioning. In particular, autobiographical memory emerges contemporaneously with the cognitive self, a knowledge structure whose features serve to organize memories of experiences that happened to "me." Because this cognitive self emerges in the 2nd year of life, the lower limit for early autobiographical memories is set at about 2 years, with subsequent accumulation of memories linked to improvements in children's ability to maintain information in storage. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The treatment of early object loss: The need to search.

Presents case studies of 2 women (aged 36 and 38 yrs) dealing with issues of early object loss in which mourning has been incomplete and specific psychic structures have not achieved total autonomy from the presence of the actual object. Discussing, re-enacting, and re-experiencing the loss in transference is not enough. In such instances treatment mobilizes in the individual a need to take action in external reality to rediscover and symbolically reclaim the lost object. Such action permits the S to complete the internal representation of the lost object. For these Ss this step is necessary before they can fully mourn the object's loss and restore to the self functions that were lost with the object. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Spatial constraints and regulatory functions in monkeys' (Cebus apella) search.

By means of an apparatus featuring a set of suspended baited containers, search abilities of 4 capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella) were evaluated. The experiment featured different spatial configurations of the search space. Results showed that monkeys exhaustively searched 9 containers spatially distributed as a 3?×?3 matrix, a cross, a line, or a circle. Search efficiency was higher when the search space featured either a linear or circular arrangement of containers. When faced with a linear arrangement of containers, the subjects developed principled search trajectories from 1 end to the other of the linear array. This behavioral regulation was independent from search efficiency as measured by the amount of visits to containers already explored. The data suggest that monkeys use either the travel distance or the cognitive costs associated with unprincipled travel trajectories as currency for regulation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Sociocultural contexts for the early development of semiotic production.

Children constantly encounter signs during cultural practices, although many theories do not fully acknowledge sociocultural aspects of semiotic development. The author examines research on cultural practices and contexts in which children learn to produce signs involving representational drawing and pretend play. This work is contrasted with more individualistic views of semiotic development that fail to adequately address sociocultural aspects of semiotic functioning to varying degrees. The author also presents a theoretical model for understanding the structure of any sign system and for comparing semiotic systems, using examples from the drawing and pretense literatures. It is proposed that the sign-making practices in which children participate are shaped by a complex hierarchy of conventions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)