Compared 12 old and 12 young adults in two information-processing tasks (a rotated figures task and a sentence verification task). The age difference was minimized when older adults adopted strategies that reduced processing. They were more disadvantaged when employing strategies that imposed greater processing demands or memory load. (JAC)

An anagram task administered to high and low test-anxious subjects under varied levels of external distraction showed a significant main effect of test anxiety for the "hard" anagrams which also interacted with the subjects' sex and distraction. The effects of increments of anxiety arousal produced by distraction are discussed.…

Investigated effects of rational vs. irrational belief systems and rational vs. irrational self-verbalizations on anxiety and persistence. Subjects (N=40) were instructed to assemble a virtually insolvable task called Soma, and were assigned to either a rational or irrational self-talk condition. Rational self-talk subjects showed a significant…

An examination of the role of metacognitive thinking (a secondary level of understanding in which an individual shows knowledge of his/her own cognitive process and products) in the cognitive training of exceptional students is presented. (PHR)

The interrogative strategies of 20 institutionalized mentally retarded young adults and 38 nonretarded first and fourth graders were investigated using a 20-questions-type task. (Author)

The article identifies three approaches for the study of braille reading, describes some examples of the approaches, and makes some suggestions for future research. (Author/PHR)

Twelve students with autism and 12 with mental retardation, who had passed a first-order test of false belief, were given a second-order reasoning task. No intergroup performance differences were seen. Findings suggest that the difficulty for both groups with the second-order task lies in information processing demands rather than conceptual…

Sentences were presented to adolescents with and without mental retardation, and their memory for the object nouns of the sentences was then tested under various conditions. Results indicate that differences in sentence processing between individuals with and without mental retardation may be a result of differences in generating integrated…

Offers a sketch of a concept called the "liminal state" that may represent a central element of designing and a condition that facilitates the best design products and processes. A definition of "liminal state," some contexts in which it may occur, and some areas where liminal states might improve performance are given.…

Examined three possible explanations for findings that infants detect textural discrepancies based on individual features more readily than on feature conjunctions. Found that none of the proposed factors could explain 5.5-month-olds' superior processing of featural over conjunction-based textural discrepancies. Findings suggest that in infancy,…

Four experiments examined very young infants' expectations about containment events. Found that 2- to 3.5-month-olds recognized that objects could be lowered inside a container with an open but not a closed top. Three-and-a-half-month-olds realized that objects could not pass through the container's back wall and should have moved with it to a new…

A study involving 12 preschool children with mental retardation, 13 children with autism, and 21 controls failed to show any facilitative effects of the use of representational and nonrepresentational cues on the performance of the children with and without autism on false belief tasks. (Contains references.) (CR)

Two experiments documented that conceptual knowledge influences 3-year-olds' extension of novel words. When objects were described as having conceptual properties typical of artifacts, children extended novel labels on the basis of shape. When same objects were described as having conceptual properties typical of animate kinds, children extended…

Studied in three experiments the distribution and malleability of visual attention in 5-month-olds while they inspected large geometric designs. Established that infants who were short-lookers had novelty scores above chance, whereas long-lookers demonstrated chance responding. Illuminating different parts of visual display induced long-lookers to…