Investigated the hypothesis that children who sustain specific reading disabilities experience difficulty in abstracting and generalizing the invariant components of words containing redundant elements because of basic dysfunction in categorical processing. Subjects were 120 poor and normal readers from the fourth, fifth, and sixth grades.…

Describes a developmental study of semantic structures in children who are asked to determine the fitness of descriptive labels for line drawings representing a variety of perceptual stimuli. (Author/WY)

Differential incentive values of verbal stimuli were tested under conditions of high and low reinforcement. Results indicated the 40 fifth grade boys acquired responses faster when high preference items were used. (ST)

Pattern of results suggests that retardates were relatively deficient in the spontaneous use of effective rehearsal mechanisms, but could perform as well as normals when instructed to use a specific rehearsal strategy. (Authors)