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Biomedical subjects

M H Bornstein

Publications and source records attributed to M H Bornstein.

At least 55 records · Page 3Linked to original sources
PubMed1985

On the development of color naming in young children: data and theory.

Among the semantics of different common attributes of the environment, consistent and correct color naming seems to develop paradoxically late in children, for even young infants discriminate and categorize colors well, color is a salient feature of the child's world, and children are aware of color as a separate domain, know color terms, and respond to color questions with color names. Several specific anomalies characterize early linguistic development in this domain: Errors in beginning color naming are perseverative or random, there seems to be a minimum age for correct and consistent color naming, developmental rate shows wide individual differences, and acquisition among girls is generally faster than among boys. This essay reviews data that support these observations, and evaluates three traditional explanations for them--including the perceptual salience of color for children, experience and learning in the child, and cognitive development--against a fourth new possibility. It is hypothesized that appropriate color naming may depend on the maturation and integration of specific cortical neurological structures; among several interpretations, the neurological one accounts best for diverse characteristics of early color naming.

Adult↗
PubMed1985

How infant and mother jointly contribute to developing cognitive competence in the child.

Infants who processed visual information more efficiently and had mothers who more frequently encouraged them to attend to properties, objects, and events in the home environment in the first 6 months of life excelled in verbal development during their second year and scored higher on a conventional psychometric assessment of intelligence at 4 years. These results, confirmed over several studies, support the idea of continuity in mental development from infancy and begin to specify parental didactic activities that may most efficaciously promote cognitive achievement in young children of different ages.

Adult↗
PubMed1985

Left-right coding and skills related to beginning reading.

Kindergarteners and first graders were tested for discrimination of left-right orientation, letter production, and performance on reading readiness and reading tests. Left-right visual skills were found to be related to reading skills in both grades but to letter production only in kindergarten. These data are viewed in the context of a deficit in left-right coding. The data cautiously suggest that different subgroups of reading-disabled children may benefit from training programs that remediate different deficiencies; affirmation of this strategy awaits further study of treatment.

Child↗
PubMed1982

Cognitive correlates of infant attention and maternal stimulation over the first year of life.

This study investigated the predictability of cognitive differences at 12 months from infant and maternal behaviors at 4 months. Babies who showed more habituation and faster habituation at 4 months scored higher on the Bayley Scales and had larger speaking vocabularies at 12 months. Success with select 4-month Bayley Scale items also predicted 12-month Bayley scores but did not predict speaking vocabulary. Additionally, 4-month-olds who vocalized more or who more frequently manipulated objects spoke more words at 12 months and als tended to score higher on the Bayley Scales at 12 months. Frequent maternal stimulation at 4 months, specifically, by encouraging babies' attention to objects, correlated with the size of speaking vocabulary at 12 months; a cross-lagged panel correlation suggested that maternal stimulation positively influenced infants' cognitive development. Regression analyses examined the power of combinations of infant and maternal predictors. Overall, the results show that some individual differences in cognition may be predictable across the first year of life.

Attention↗
PubMed1981

The role of symmetry in infant form discrimination.

This study examined whether infants can discriminate form on the basis of symmetrical organization when other stimulus factors are equated. 48 4-month-olds were tested in a habituation-dishabituation discrimination paradigm using vertically symmetrical, horizontally symmetrical, and asymmetrical forms. Infants discriminated vertically symmetrical forms from asymmetrical and from horizontally symmetrical ones, but they did not discriminate horizontally symmetrical forms from asymmetrical ones, nor did they discriminate asymmetrical forms from one another. This pattern of results suggests that the global organization embodied in vertical symmetry promotes perceptual discrimination. 12 additional 4-month-olds were habituated and tested with 2 vertical patterns. Their failure to demonstrate a reliable pattern of dishabituation suggests that babies respond to goodness of organization rather than to details unique to particular symmetrical patterns.

Female↗
PubMed1979

Color categories in macaques.

This experiment investigated whether macaque monkeys partition the photic spectrum into the same four basic hue categories that humans do, i.e., blue, green, yellow, and red. Monkeys were trained to respond in the presence of one chromatic stimulus and were tested, in extinction, for generalization to others. In extinction, the monkeys responded at similar and high levels to stimuli that fell in the same basic human hue category as the training stimulus and at similar and much lower levels to stimuli that fell in a different human hue category from the training stimulus. It was concluded that macaques and humans categorize the spectrum in a similar fashion.

Animals↗
PubMed1978

Color-naming evidence for tritan vision in the fovea.

A color-naming task was used to assess color vision in the fovea and parafovea. Like traditional psychophysical procedures, color naming showed that short-wavelength vision is suppressed centrally. The anatomical and physiological mechanisms underlying tritan foveal vision are discussed.

Adolescent↗