In Experiment 1, we trained four pigeons to concurrently discriminate displays of 16 same icons (16S) from displays of 16 different icons (16D) as well as between displays of same icons (16S) from displays that contained 15 same icons and one different icon (15S:1D). The birds rapidly learned to discriminate 16S vs. 16D displays, but they failed…

Simple discriminations are involved in many functional skills; additionally, they are components of conditional discriminations (identity and arbitrary matching-to-sample), which are involved in a wide array of other important performances. Many individuals with severe disabilities have difficulty acquiring simple discriminations with standard…

Four experiments investigated newborns' ability to discriminate, recognize, and learn visual information embedded in the schematic face-like patterns preferred at birth. Results indicated that newborns discriminated face-like stimuli relying on their internal features and recognized a perceptual invariance between face-like configurations in…

Following a review of the literature on responses of autistic persons to environmental stimulation, three experiments are detailed which examine the relationship between modality preference and rate of acquisition of a discrimination task. First, seven autistic children's preference for colored lights and/or simple tones was assessed in a sensory…

Errorless discrimination training is a technique in which the discriminative stimulus is supplemented with a salient cue which is gradually removed or faded during the course of training. In this study errorless discrimination training was used to teach preschool children the distinctive features of letters of the alphabet that are difficult to…

Describes ways for developing visual imagery in the early childhood education program, preparing children for discrimination learning and reading instruction. (RL)

Seventeen preschool children were administered two color-discrimination pretests, verbal and nonverbal. The five children who scored lowest were chosen to recieve the color program. Four scored elow 85 percent on the nonverbal pretest, whereas the other 12 children scored above 85 percent. On the verbal pretest, all five experimental subjects…

Four-, five-, and six-year-old children were used as subjects in this investigation. There were 192 experimental and 96 control children used, divided equally between the three age groups. The experimental children received a 1-minute pretest exposure procedure in which 1/4 of the children observed 4 two-dimensional stimuli (irregular pentagons),…

This study established a controlled instructional procedure for visual concept learning in a school setting and investigated the possibility that an ability trait difference could affect visual learning of the concept. A total of 84 high visualizers and 84 low visualizers were selected from 629 fourth grade children according to their scores on…