We report a cross-syndrome comparison of the development of holistic processing in face recognition in school-aged children with developmental disorders: autism, Down syndrome, and Williams syndrome. The autism group was split into two groups: one with high-functioning children and one with low-functioning children. The latter group has rarely…

Compared to mental and chronological age-matched groups of normal children, six autistic children (1) did not maximize reinforcement; (2) sampled less, and less efficiently; and (3) were much less responsive to extinction. Autistic sampling behavior was redirected by stimulus change. Results are viewed as perhaps causally related to many…

Sought to establish a valid computer measurement technique for educational assessment applications. Similarities and differences in performance on visual discrimination tasks for young children of normal development and adolescents with severe mental retardation were analyzed using multiple testing procedures. Found differences in the two groups…

Retarded and borderline intelligence adolescents (MA 8-12 years) and nonretarded children (MA 6-12 years) were given logical problem solving tasks. Results showed a profound deficiency in low IQ individuals on certain tasks requiring foresight and logic; MA markedly overestimates the performance of these individuals relative to the performance of…

Understanding of the cardinality principle in children with Williams Syndrome (WS) was compared to that of typically developing children. Findings indicated that such understanding was extremely delayed in WS children and only at the level predicted by their visuo-spatial mental age. Findings suggested that visuo-spatial ability played a greater…

Describes three experiments that tested autistic children's nonverbal and verbal categorization abilities. Concludes that autistic children do not suffer a specific cognitive deficit in ability to categorize and form abstract concepts. (HOD)