What is peripersonal space? An examination of unresolved empirical issues and emerging findings.

Findings from diverse fields of study, including neuroscience, psychology, zoology, and sociology, demonstrate that human and non-human primates maintain a representation of the space immediately surrounding the body, known as peripersonal space (PPS). However, progress in this field has been hampered by the lack of an agreed upon definition of PPS. Since the beginning of its formal study, scientists have argued that PPS plays a crucial role in both defensive and non-defensive actions.

Children's use of comparison and function in novel object categorization.

Although young children often rely on salient perceptual cues, such as shape, when categorizing novel objects, children eventually shift towards deeper relational reasoning about category membership. This study investigates what information young children use to classify novel instances of familiar categories. Specifically, we investigated two sources of information that have the potential to facilitate the classification of novel exemplars: (1) comparison of familiar category instances, and (2) attention to function information that might direct children's attention to functionally relevant perceptual features.

Individual Differences in the Flexibility of Peripersonal Space.

The current study investigated individual differences in the flexibility of peripersonal space (i.e., representational space near the body), specifically in relation to trait claustrophobic fear (i.

Labels affect preschoolers' tool-based scale errors.

Scale errors offer a unique context in which to examine the interdependencies between language and action. Here, we manipulated the presence of labels in a tool-based paradigm previously shown to elicit high rates of scale errors. We predicted that labels would increase children's scale errors with tools by directing attention to shape, function, and category membership.