Two studies examined the organization of color perception in 4-month-old human infants. In Study 1, infants looked at selected spectral stimuli repeatedly until their visual attention waned. The stimuli represented instances of basic adult hue categories - blue, green, yellow, and red. Following habituation, infants were shown a series of wavelengths which were the same as or different from the stimuli first seen. Analyses of infant attention during this dishabituation phase of the study indicated that infants categorize wavelengths by perceptual similarity; that is, they see hues in the spectrum much as adults do. In Study 2, a group of infants who looked at the alteration of two wavelengths from the same hue category habituated as did the group of infants who looked at the repitition of a single wavelength from that category, but a group of infants who looked at two wavelengths from different categories habituated at a slower rate. Data from the two studies suggest a high degree of organization of the color world prior to language acquisition.
The theme of the child as a cultural invention can be recognized in several intellectual and social occasions. Aries' (1962) commentary on the discovery and transformation of childhood has become common knowledge; there is an agitated sense that American children' are being redefined by the present times (Lasch, 1978); there is a renewed appreciation of the complexity of all our children (Keniston, 1977); and ethnographic and journalistic reports tell us of the marvelous departures from our own ways of seeing children that exist in other lands (Kessen, 197S). In simple fact, we have recently seen a shower of books on childish variety across cultures and across the hierarchies of class and race. We could have just as readily discovered commanding evidence of the shifting nature of childhood by a close look at our own history. Consider just three messages drawn haphazardly from the American past. To the parents of the late 18th century: The first duties of Children are in great measure mechanical: an obedient Child makes a Bow, comes and goes, speaks, or is silent, just as he is bid, before he knows any other Reason for so doing than that he is bid. (Nelson, 1753) Or to our parents and grandparents: The rule that parents should not play with their children may seem hard but it is without doubt a safe one. (West, 1914) Or hear a parent of the 1970s speak of her 6year-old: LuAnn liked the school in California best-the only rules were no chemical additives in the food and no balling in the hallways. (Rothchild & Wolf, 1976) And we cannot escape the implications of an unstable portrait of the child by moving from folk psychology to the professional sort. On the con-Vol. 34, No. 10,815-820 The first form of this article was read as an invited address to Division 7 (Developmental Psychology) of the American Psychological Association during the annual meeting, Toronto, August 1978. Requests for reprints should be sent to
617 adults and children served as Ss in 9 studies of the relation between expressed preference and differing amounts of variability of stimulation. Random shapes and different sequential approximations to English were used as variations in stimulus variability. The results supported the following generalizations. Human beings arc sensitive to amount of variability in stimulation. There is an intermediate amount of variability which was consistently most preferred by unsophisticated Ss. Preference for the stimuli used was jointly determined by number of independent characteristics of the stimuli and their meaningfulness. Preference for variability changed with Ss' experience with variable stimulation, whether the experience was induced experimentally or was the result of specific professional training. The tendency to increase preference for stimulation of high variability is related to Ss' ability to code or process variability.
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