Proposes explanations and further research considerations for the apparent psychological equivalence of the terms "complexity" and "novelty" as they refer to information theory, stimulus generalization, and subject expectancy effects. (RL)

The effect of syntax training on the sentence production of four adults with Broca's aphasia was examined. Generalization and maintenance were measured, and naive judges rated "adequacy" of responses. Findings indicated that effects are limited to the grammatical constructions taught, and that effects on response adequacy may be limited.…

Effect of instructional conditions on the nature of memory errors was studied using a false recognition procedure. (Authors)

Children's imitation of a model's sentence structure, word content and use of present, imperfect or future tense verbs was studied in third and fourth graders. (Authors)

Three studies are reported which investigated the role of four variables in semantic generalization: Intentional versus Incidental learning instructions, associative and semantic relationships of the generalization stimuli (GSs) to the critical stimuli (CrSs), and rate of CrS presentation. (Author)

Kindergarten and first grade children were trained to choose the middle-sized stimulus in either a single stimulus set or in each of two nonoverlapping stimulus sets. Findings were reported in terms of the assumption that cognitive processes are important in the intermediate-sized transposition paradigm. (Author/DB)

We have used a genetically tractable model system, the fruit fly "Drosophila melanogaster" to study the interdependence between sensory processing and associative processing on learning performance. We investigated the influence of variations in the physical and predictive properties of color stimuli in several different operant-conditioning…

This theoretical paper is concerned with the evaluation and preference responses of preschool children to light- and dark-skinned human figures. The paper examines the hypothesis that in children the frequently observed bias favoring light-skinned persons over dark-skinned persons is not a racial bias but is related to early learning experiences…

Curriculum development would be greatly aided if it could be demonstrated that certain instructional techniques have a generalization effect that encompasses several content settings. The evidence that transfer does occur within the learning process is strong enough to warrant this study into the generalization of science instruction. It was…

Six studies relevant to the analysis of generalized imitative behavior are described. The first examined the role of verbal instructions in generalized imitation by comparing the use of a "do this" instruction with no such instruction and the use of positive reinforcement with no reinforcement. The tenacity of generalized imitation in this study…

Two experiments were done with a 16-year-old severely retarded male, involving the training of generalized instruction-following responses to preposition-noun combinations. (Author/DLS)

Two autistic boys, ages 6 and 10 years, whose imitative responding was functionally inaccurate and whose performance generalized poorly, were trained to imitate accurately using a reinforcement-extinction strategy. (DLS)

To explore training with multiple exemplars, six severely retarded students (ages 5-21) were taught signed labels for categories of natural objects using either three or five good examples. The arithmetic difference between the two conditions indicated higher levels of generalization following training with five examples for five of the six…