Three source-memory experiments were conducted with Spanish-English bilinguals and monolingual English speakers matched on age, education, nonverbal cognitive ability and socioeconomic status. Bilingual language proficiency and dominance were assessed using standardized objective measures. In Experiment 1, source was manipulated visuo-spatially,…

Human contingency learning studies were used to compare the predictions of configural and elemental theories. In two experiments, participants were required to learn which stimuli were associated with an increase in core temperature of a fictitious nuclear plant. Experiments investigated the rate at which a simple negative patterning…

Advocates of modality preference posit that individuals have a dominant sense and that when new material is presented in this preferred modality, learning is enhanced. Despite the widespread belief in this position, there is little supporting evidence. In the present study, the authors implemented a Morse code-like recall task to examine whether…

Performance by 11 multiply handicapped children (3-7 years old) on discrimination tasks was used to predict performance on four common classroom tasks in auditory, sign, and visual modes. Ninety-two percent of the predictions made were accurate, indicating that the discrimination assessment was successful in determining each child's preferred…

This study tested the assimilation of an auditory-visual stimulus configuration in 32 infants aged 15 to 16 weeks. The infants' discrimination of matched and mismatched auditory-visual stimuli indicated that infants by 4 months of age are capable of constructing bimodal schemata. (JMB)

Major finding was that punishment presented in the same sensory modality as the reinforcement was superior to punishment presented in a different sensory modality from the reinforcement. (Author)

Experiments showed that in verbal discrimination learning imaging the referent of the correct item was more facilitative than vocalizing the correct item, as long as the imagery structure was executed in the company of relevant motor activity. No difference between the two strategies was found in pictorial discrimination learning. (Author/BJG)

Analysis of 40 first-grade children's performance on two discrimination learning problems revealed that children do transfer dimensional information between the visual and tactual modalities. (Author/JMB)

Results indicate that the RCR (rehearsal-of-the-correct-alternative response) plays an important role such that when the RCR is inhibited, performance is reduced. (Authors/CB)

Recent studies have suggested that unusual visual processing in autism might stem from enhanced visual discrimination. Although there are also many anecdotal reports of auditory and tactile processing disturbances in autism these have received comparatively little attention. It is possible that the enhanced discrimination ability in vision in…

Experiment was designed to provide some evidence that motor cortex involvement may facilitate visual perception during the period of perceptual learning. (Author)

Study shows that there are differences in the information-processing capacities of touch and vision and that these differences are influenced by a variety of factors. (Author)

Examined were the effects of number of stimuli and of two different stimulus modalities on the discrimination learning of 17 autistic children (mean age 57 months). Discrimination training was carried out in three groups with varied light and sound stimuli. Among findings was that mental age was negatively correlated with trials to criterion and…

Reports three experiments to investigate differences in the semantic classification of pictures and words. The data suggest that visual short-term memory and semantic memory operate in semantic-decision tasks though these sources of information differ in characteristics, potential for activation, and level of abstraction. (PMJ)