Four pursuit-tracking experiments were conducted in an attempt to replicate with adults, Hockey's findings that loud noise increases attentional selectivity. Neither attentional selectivity nor masking of auditory feedback was found to be significant. For Hockey's reply and the authors' rejoinder, see p499-506 of this issue. (SJL)

The author indicates a number of methodological differences between his experiments and the unsuccessful replication by Forster and Grierson. He also suggests that these problems are complicated by an unnecessarily narrow interpretation of the attentional selectivity hypothesis. Forster and Grierson's study and rejoinder appear in this journal…

To study improvement of visual monitoring of retardates, specialized training methods backed up by incentives were used. The extent to which these training techniques might be expected to produce results which would generalize was explored. Subjects were eight female mental retardates (ages 15-22) with IQs from 38 to 69. (Author/SJL)

Meta-analysis on 25 studies found that both methodologically strong and weak studies demonstrated significant behavioral deficits of children with learning disabilities in 5 areas: on-task behavior, off-task behavior, conduct disorders, distractibility, and shy/withdrawn behavior. Effect sizes clustered around 1 standard deviation. (Author/DB)