This study examined effects of visual impairment on the performance of typical educational tasks requiring visual accommodation to print material at three different distances. Subjects were 18 visually impaired and 19 nonimpaired children (ages 6-10). Findings indicated that visually impaired children exhibited more fixation shifts per task.…

Examined children's emotional and cognitive responses to emotionally evocative vignettes. Results indicated age-related increases in children's responses. Found limited increases with age in children's concordant emotions, or emotions identical to emotions of persons in the vignettes, and continuous increases with age in children's attributions…

Scores of 66 elementary students (referred for poor learning progress) on the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Revised (PPVT-R) were below mean performance on all Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale-Fourth Edition (SB:FE) area scores except memory. The study refutes the assertion that the PPVT-R is an appropriate screening instrument for the SB:FE.…

The influence of visual signals (echo and reverberation) on speech fluency in 60 stutterers and nonstutterers was examined. Visual signals were found to exert a corrective influence on the speech of stutterers but less than the influence of acoustic stimuli. Use of visual signals in combination with acoustic and tactile signals is recommended. (DB)

Three studies examined infant preferences for attractive faces of White males, White females, Black females, and infants. Infants viewed pairs of faces rated for attractiveness by adults. Preferences for attractive faces were found for all facial types. (BC)

Analyzes attributes of symbols and identifies the need for a suitable management system for retrieving images from a database. A classification structure that incorporates graphic, semantic, and bibliographic dimensions is described; experiments with describing, sorting, and drawing symbols are reviewed; and future work on a database management…

Sixteen visually impaired children (aged 2-6) were exposed to a specially prepared visual stimulation video, and their vision attention was rated quantitatively and qualitatively. The results suggest that this technique could be useful in stimulating functional vision in young children. (Author)

This study investigated the physiological responses of 13 mothers with and 17 mothers without a childhood history of physical abuse to videotape presentations of an infant smiling or crying. Mothers who had been abused showed increased skin conductance while viewing the smiling infant, whereas mothers without a history of abuse showed increased…

This study, involving four severely handicapped adults in a community residence, compared two interventions for improving quality of household cleaning. A graduated prompting system showed moderate improvements in three subjects, whereas a self-management package (including sequential picture cues, self-monitoring, feedback, and public posting of…

This article reviews the theoretical and research literature on vision stimulation and vision training of children with severe irreversible visual impairments. It recommends early stimulation to prevent visual deprivation, use of operant conditioning, and the presentation of highly contrasting stimuli to stimulate visual awareness in children with…

A probabilistic choice model, based on L. L. Thurstone's Law of Comparative Judgment Case V, is developed for paired comparisons data about psychological stimuli. The model assumes that each stimulus is measured on a small number of physical variables. An algorithm for estimating parameters is illustrated with real data. (SLD)

This study of the haptic processing of 9 children with specific language impairment and 9 normal-language children (ages 5-7) found that both groups performed similarly when the response modality was tactile and task requirements were minimal and performed differently when response demands included cross-modal processing or increased symbolic and…

Two alternative instruction conditions (modeling and imitation) were used to teach a novel morpheme, embodied in a visual symbol system, to 21 children (ages 5-6) with specific language impairment (SLI) and 2 peer groups. Results indicated that imitation practice afforded assistance to children with SLI and their age-matched peers in morpheme…

A stimulus equivalence procedure for the acquisition of English and Spanish words was evaluated with two adolescents having head injuries. Following training on one task, subjects attained and maintained high scores on all matching-to-sample tasks. Results suggest the procedure is effective for teaching foreign language skills to head-injured…

A study involving elementary school students in three age groups examined two explanations for the finding that young children tend to classify objects according to similarity relations, whereas adults emphasize dimensional structure. Results countered the view that children perceive objects according to a more primitive holistic structure. (RH)