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…

Eight autistic children and young adolescents (mean age 12.9 years) were compared to normal chronological age controls. Ss were required to discriminate briefly presented visual stimuli when they were preceded or followed by a visual noise mask and when they were not. The minimum stimulus exposure duration for criterion identification of unmasked…

Following pretraining on three figures, 44 nonhandicapped preschoolers were assigned to experimental groups to investigate methods of integrating a new, similar symbol into a set of familiar symbols to approximate the difficult disciminations encountered by young children in school. (Author)

The purpose of this study was to identify the nature of the information which preschool-age children must attend to and maintain within problems in order to solve a series of two-choice simultaneous discrimination problems. Twenty-four preschool children participated in the experiment. The stimuli used in these problems consisted of planometric…

Results of an experiment using perception and discrimination learning tests showed that, in children, perception is affected by labels, perceptual learning, and selective attention. These effects are determined developmentally. As age increases, the effects of verbal clues decrease and those of perceptual clues increase. (PMJ)

To test the theory that retardates are particularly slow in forming some visual habits, especially attention, a series of experiments were performed using a laboratory device which forced subjects to discriminate between color and form in exchange for an incentive reward. Stochastic models were applied to tests of lower level retardates which…

Four severely retarded and four nonretarded adolescents learned compound discriminations in the haptic (touch) modality using D. Ray's conflict-compound procedure. Subjects evinced selective attention effects in posttraining tests conducted in the haptic modality. Visual transfer tests revealed the effects of conflict-compound discrimination…

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…

Infants ranging in age from six months to eight months were shown repeated instances of real object movement-disappearance-reappearance. Results suggest that the key changes in early cognitive development rest primarily upon the infant's gradual adaptation of old responses through encounters with new events--rather than upon the acquisition of…

This study examined whether 49 adults with mild or moderate mental retardation could perform reliably enough on the Penn Facial Discrimination Task to make this a useful research measure for evaluating visual-receptive processing. Results found subjects generally performed well above chance level, that retest reliability was reasonably high, and…

Delineates how the transition from one element to another facilitates the identification of individual form and function. Explains the process of bridging separate forms and functions to give meaning to what is seen. (KEH)

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)

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…