A study of three adolescents with mental retardation found that six-picture matching was more accurate when a written list was available at the time the participant selected the comparison pictures than on trials in which a list was written, read, or both, but was not available during comparison selection. (CR)

This study compared the performance of 17 children with autism, 17 children with mental retardation, and 31 normally developing children on a false belief task performance using a posting manipulation (a pictorial cue which facilitates the false belief performance of normal 3-year-olds). The performance of autistic children was significantly…

Habituated 180 neonates to white lights of varying luminance and tested for recovery of habituation to green, yellow, or red lights varying in excitation purity. Found that newborns discriminated chromatic stimuli from white only when excitation purity exceeded levels much higher than those for adults. Results reinforce view that neonates' vision…

Introduces a notational system called pictography for temporarily preserving story content in interventions with children having language disorders. Children represent characters, settings, and action sequences with simple, stick-figure drawings. Benefits of narrative intervention are described, including facilitation of time sequence, increased…

Assesses effectiveness of a representational visual imagery training program on the reading and listening comprehension of a group of poor listening comprehenders (mean age: 7 years 8 months). Finds significant improvement on a curriculum-based test of listening comprehension, a standardised test of reading comprehension, and a measure of story…

Three experiments involving four children (ages 3-7) with mental retardation found participants preferred unreliable reinforcements under certain conditions. Findings are discussed regarding the role of specific stimuli as conditioned reinforcers and how they influence preference for a response that produces reinforcement on a leaner schedule than…

Examined three possible explanations for findings that infants detect textural discrepancies based on individual features more readily than on feature conjunctions. Found that none of the proposed factors could explain 5.5-month-olds' superior processing of featural over conjunction-based textural discrepancies. Findings suggest that in infancy,…

Three groups of 10 children, ages 8-14 (with autism or receptive developmental language disorder or without disabilities), participated in event-related brain potential experiments. Results suggest that both clinical groups failed to fully process changes in stimulus intensity. Findings are discussed in terms of potential abnormalities in…

Four studies examined the influence of essentialist information such as internal properties and perceptual similarity on 3-, 4-, and 5-year olds' interpretations of labels. Results suggested that children have essentialist beliefs about animals, but not about artifacts, and that these beliefs interact with children's assumptions about word meaning…

A study involving 12 preschool children with mental retardation, 13 children with autism, and 21 controls failed to show any facilitative effects of the use of representational and nonrepresentational cues on the performance of the children with and without autism on false belief tasks. (Contains references.) (CR)

Used multiple-baseline design to assess the utility of presenting three types of cues when teaching an abstract concept such as colors to three children with autism: plain, label, and symbol. Found colors presented with cues were easier to learn than color without cues. Findings support the need for sensitivity for the highly individualized…

A study of two forms of the Auditory Reading Test with 53 elderly participants with normal or low vision and hearing found mild-to-moderate hearing loss did not reduce auditory reading rates as much as expected. Participants with low vision read as quickly using computers and natural speech as sighted participants. (Contains references.)…

Describes connectionist model showing exclusivity asymmetries when categorizing visual stimuli, similar to pattern shown by infants. Examines asymmetries in terms of an associative learning mechanism, distributed internal representations, and statistics of feature distributions in the stimuli. Details test of model with infants, finding that…

A study investigated subjective judgments of clarity and intelligibility in 20 listeners in conditions in which speech was equated for predicted intelligibility but varied in bandwidth. Listeners produced clarity and intelligibility ratings for the same speech material and experimental conditions that were highly related but differed in magnitude.…

Replicates a previous study by Cole, et al. (1997b), which demonstrated that the type of stimulus used to elicit a written response had a marked impact for items measuring organization, unity, and coherence. The replicated study sample, consisting of 29 middle school students, produced comparable results to the Cole, et al. study. (Author/GCP)