Wide Range Achievement Test arithmetic scores related to Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Revised freedom from distractibility and perceptual organization scores as well as simultaneous processing. Educable mentally retarded childrens' reading problems may relate to failure to apply verbal intellectual abilities to academic tasks. (Author)

Reports on experiments examining the semantic organization of concrete nouns and verbs and its development in childhood. Differences in semantic organization are said to be a clue to age-related changes in performance with verbs. (AM)

Research from four subareas of prose learning (advance organizers, response modes, objectives, and inserted questions) is considered and weaknesses in the studies conducted are noted. Suggestions are advanced as to how researchers might profitably spend their energies in the future. (RC)

This first installment in a series of edited transcripts based on a conference held at Utah State University in 1987 reviews the main points of Gagne's Learning Theory. Categories of human performance that are discussed include verbal information, intellectual skills, cognitive strategies, attitudes, and motor skills. (Three references) (LRW)

Emerging data support the construct validity of component process variables of learning and memory within the Hopkins Verbal Learning Test-Revised (HVLT-R; Brandt & Benedict, 2001); however, the test-retest reliabilities of such measures are heretofore largely unknown. This study reveals generally modest-to-low 1-year test-retest stability for…

Research has suggested that the two hemispheres of the brain serve specialized functions, with the most recent studies portraying the left hemisphere as processing information in a linear, serial, or sequential manner and the right hemisphere as processing information in a holistic, concrete, or visual mode. Although few systematic studies have…

Proposes a self-instructional strategy training paradigm designed to explicitly teach that the use of heuristic processes and mediational devices can be employed to compensate for age-associated deficits, such as poor problem solving. Format for the procedure was derived from the developmental research of the Soviet psychologists Vygotsky and…

The purpose of this study was to further investigate performance differences between reflective and impulsive subjects on a recognition memory task. Other researchers have proposed that these differences are based on visual analysis and that they are relatively independent of verbal processes. To test this contention, a sentence recognition task…

Ninety children in third and fourth grade were assessed on a hierarchical class inclusion task. Scores were trichotomized, and children from each level were randomly assigned to one of three cueing conditions (no cues, two superordinate cues, six subordinate cues). Subjects were administered a recall task of categorized words and "new" words…

Describes an experiment measuring response latency which required subjects to make a word-nonword decision in response to a visually presented item. (AM)

Two experiments tested what happens to learning performance as serial location of a word list is removed as a consistent source of associations across trials. Serial recall produced a stable level of performance and little learning. Serial recall learning may require certain memory factors in combination. (CHK)

The study of verbal behavior has a long history in the Soviet Union, and some of the studies, especially those related to verbal conditioning and learning, have had considerable impact on Western research, particularly in the United States. The view set forth in this paper is that "voluntary behavior" is only that behavior which is…