When too much visual stimuli is present, the phenomenon of clutter is known to degrade an individual's perception across a variety of domains, ranging from completing search tasks incorrectly, to decreasing reading speed when letters are too close together. However, research is lacking as to whether the negative effects of clutter impact learning…

Earlier research (Thorson, et al., 1976) found that latencies increase for acoustically confusable letter pairs and decrease for visually confusable letter pairs as a positive function of interstimulus interval (ISI). To extend these findings to different age groups, 30 young adults (mean age, 21.4 years) and 30 older adults (mean age, 68.8 years)…

The processing of mental structures in perception appears to be serial, in that viewers can fill in missing parts from an impoverished stimulus following a top down process. To investigate the effects of unfamiliarity, complexity, and legibility on object and layout perception of unfamiliar stimuli, ten subjects were shown one of four ribbon…

Although there are many variables that influence conformity, Bickman (1974) found that the apparel of the person making a request had a significant influence on conformity. To evaluate other factorswhicn may influence conformity (gender, age, status of the conforming subject, and altruism in conforming), 150 adult pedestrians (45% female, 71%…

This paper discusses three studies which examined the interaction of dimensional dominance with the attentional components of alertness and encoding. In Study I, twenty 6- and 7-year-olds observed thirty 3-second exposures of a color, then participated in a 40-trial choice reaction time task in which the familiarized color and a novel color served…

The present study was designed to determine if subjects of different ages are equally distracted by meaningless perceptual and by semantic features of potentially interfering information. In contrast to a Stroop-like task, figures instead of words were used as possibly interfering information. First graders, fourth graders, and college students…

Two experiments investigated children's strategies for solving geometric matrices that were correctly or incorrectly completed and that varied in number of elements and number of transformations. Examining the relationship between working memory and item complexity, the first experiment tested 90 boys and girls of 7, 10, and 13 years of age for…

Cognitive processes, particularly in regard to negative content schemata, seem to play an instrumental role in the development and maintenance of depression. In order to better understand the nature of negative schemata in depressed individuals, both depressed and nondepressed subjects participated in two studies in which they were required to…

This study investigates the hypothesis that reflective children have a tendency for detailed analysis of information whereas impulsive children process information more globally, and that differences in strategies of visual information processing of these two conceptual style groups lead to superior performance of reflective children insofar as…

Irritability levels and activity reactivity to aversive tactile stimuli were compared for 144 full-term neonates and 191 preterm infants. Irritability ratings increased across the five trials both during and post stimulation for full-term females and males and for preterm females, but not for preterm males. Activity ratings decreased across trials…

In recent research, two qualitatively different classes of mental operations have been identified. The performance of one type of cognitive task requires attention, in the sense of mental effort, for its execution, while the second type can be performed automatically, independent of attentional control. Further research has shown that automatic…

Two experiments evaluated the effects of mnemonic training upon 5- and 10-year-old children's learning and retention of patterns at varying intervals. Subjects were 172 middle class children evenly distributed across the two age groups. Experiment I investigated the effects of individual strategies (perceptual exploration, organization of…