Mismatching amodal redundancy inhibits operant learning in 5-month-old infants.

The current study examined the functional role redundant amodal information plays in an operant learning task in 5-month-old human infants. Prior studies have suggested that both simple and complex learning processes (discrimination, associative conditioning) are facilitated when amodal information is presented redundantly across sensory modalities. These studies, however, did not test whether the amodal information had to be similar across modalities for facilitation to occur.

Redundant amodal properties facilitate operant learning in 3-month-old infants.

The current study examined the role redundant amodal properties play in an operant learning task in 3-month-old human infants. Prior studies have suggested that the presence of redundant amodal information facilitates detection and discrimination of amodal properties and potentially functions to influence general learning processes such as associative conditioning. The current study examined how human infants use redundant amodal information (visual and haptic) about the shape of an object to influence learning of an operant response.

The influence of training views on infants' long-term memory for simple 3D shapes.

This investigation explored infants' ability to retrieve a memory for a simple 3D shape from a novel view following a 24-hr delay. Tests of memory for shape in infancy have typically used extremely short delay intervals between familiarization and test in examining the ability to equate between substantially different views of a 3D object. The current study used longer delays to assess the content of a long-term memory representation.

Three-month-old infants' object recognition across changes in viewpoint using an operant learning procedure.

Object knowledge refers to the understanding that all objects share certain properties. Various components of object knowledge (e.g.

Visual search for high-level configural differences as well as low-level critical features is highly efficient early in childhood.

Visual search, or the ability to locate a single target from a field of distractors, is used as a means of assessing the capacity of the visual system with regard to the detection of low-level stimulus dimensions such as color, line orientation, and other specific perceptual features and higher level characteristics such as three-dimensional (3-D) orientation implied by pictorial cues to depth or occlusion. Target-distractor differences of importance to the visual system result in rapid (and possibly preattentive) target location while differences of lesser importance (or differences that are less salient) tend to elicit slower, less efficient search performance (search in this latter case may require attentional resources.) Adult abilities in this type of task have been tested extensively, but comparatively little is known about the development of these abilities.

Developmental differences in temporal patterns and potentiation of isolation-induced ultrasonic vocalizations: influence of temperature variables.

The present study examined the relationship between the thermal environment and core body temperature in producing age-related patterns of ultrasonic vocalizations (USVs). Implanted telemetry devices allowed on-line measurement of core body temperature during an extended period of isolation and after maternal contact, both as a function of age and thermal environment. At 12 or 17 days of age, rat pups were isolated for 30 min in either a cool or a warm environment, returned home for 5 min, and then re-isolated for 10 min.