Reported were two studies designed to clarify the effects of verbal elaboration on children's learning. Study I was undertaken to replicate, with controlled training times, an earlier investigation of the effects of three types of extended verbal elaboration (sentences, semantic paragraphs, and syntactic paragraphs). Trials to criterion analyses…

Two studies investigated characteristics of verbal elaborations (length and number of relations provided by the syntactic construction) to determine what makes them effective mediators for young children. Study I treated the role of an elaboration's length in facilitating paired associate learning in 22 nursery school children. Data indicated that…

Investigated were the effects of varying instructional explicitness (minimal, general, and explicit) and types of reinforcement (none, extrinsic, and intrinsic or relational) on the learning of an oddity discrimination task by 48 nursery school children. Ss were randomly assigned to six groups where general or minimal instructional explicitness…

The effects of five elaboration conditions on the paired associate learning of 50 educable mentally retarded children (mean age 9 years) were investigated. Four of the conditions were included in a two factor design (type of relation x familiarity); the fifth (nonsense condition) was included as an outside control. Ten children were tested in each…

Investigated in the first of two studies on verbal elaboration in special populations (learning problem and retarded children) were the effects of paragraph elaboration on the paired-associate and reversal learning of 137 brain-injured and familial educable mentally retarded children 8- to 13-years-old. The relationship between brain-injury…

The ability of 23 educable mentally retarded children (mean chronological age, 9 years) to transfer verbal elaboration techniques to a labeling task was tested following one, two, or no elaboration experiences. An additional 18 retardates were tested in two outside control conditions to identify the effects of reversal experience on acquisition…

The capability of young high ability children to cope with extraneous distractive stimuli during performance on a two-choice discrimination task was investigated. Results indicate that existing interpretations of the development of attentive abilities in children based on the notion of an increasing attention span are in need of elaboration or…

The effect of same sex and cross sex experimenters on the attentive behaviors and learning of 64 educable mentally retarded children were examined under two conditions: experimenter not present; and experimenter present and providing cues relevant to task mastery. Female Ss were found to perform significantly better with male experimenters than…

Effects of same- and cross-sex experimenters on attentive behavior and learning of 64 educable retarded children (mean age 10 years) were examined in two conditions: experimenter not present (not in) or experimenter present and providing cues relevant to task mastery (relevant cue). (Author)

Preschool, second-, and sixth-grade children performed developmentally gradated, easy and difficult visual discrimination tasks in a quiet room or with one of two levels of extraneous auditory stimulation. Subjects' errors, response latencies, and glances away from the task were recorded. (Author/RH)