Sustained attention to visual and auditory stimuli and reflection-impulsivity were examined in 48 hyperactive and 48 normal 9 and 14 year old boys. Multivariate analyses, followed by univariate tests, indicated that the nonhyperactive Ss increased sustained attention efficiency with age to both visual and auditory Stimuli. Hyperactive Ss increased…

A gestalt approach to theatrical design seems to provide some ready and stable explanations for a number of issues in the scenic arts. Gestalt serves as the theoretical base for a number of experiments in psychology whose findings appear to delineate the principles of art to be used in scene design. The fundamental notion of gestalt theory…

This study explores the reason why very young infants are unable to respond differentially to faces and the cause for developmental changes in infant face perception by age 3 months. Linear systems analysis (LSA) and the contrast sensitivity function (CSF) were used to estimate the facial pattern information available to 1- and 3-month-old…

Preferential looking behavior to stimuli varying in temporal frequency was examined in 11 prematurely born, Black and Hispanic infants when they were between 37 and 39 weeks of postconceptional age. Infants were tested one hour after they had fed on two successive days. Infants were unswaddled during testing on the first day, and swaddled during…

Two 4-year-old children were shown the use of an apparatus whereby they could obtain toys and candy by making certain responses. The apparatus was a matching-to-sample device on which were arranged five response buttons in a circle and one in the middle. Each response button had a display window for the stimulus. Four of the five windows on the…

The failure of verbal descriptions to convey an understanding of film terminology led to a student production of a 20-minute color film that defines various film methods by illustrating them. A technique is shown on the screen and simultaneous soundtrack narration explains how this technique can be used. When the narration lasts longer than the…

This paper describes three experiments which investigated children's recognition of moving, active people. Experiments 1 and 2 found that young children had considerable difficulty in recognizing a videotaped person who initially performed a single 10-sec activity and then reappeared with a different activity and/or different hair style. The…

This paper reports three studies designed to determine whether children show selective attention and/or differential memory to slide pictures of same-sex vs. opposite-sex models and activities. Attention was measured using a feedback EEG procedure, which measured the presence or absence of alpha rhythms in the subjects' brains during presentation…

This study is an attempt to partially confirm the hypothesis that first grade children, generally lacking the skills and/or capacities for efficiently organizing their memories for verbally-presented information, benefit from illustrations which provide a simple external memory. The sample consisted of 32 first grade (second semester) children,…

The present study used a set of bimodal (auditory-visual) conflict designed specifically for the preschool child. The basic component was a match-to-sample sequence designed to reduce the often-found contaminating factors in studies with young children: failure to understand or remember instructions, inability to perform the indicator response, or…

This research project assessed: (1) the practicality of recording heart rate in 18-month-old infants as they watched events filmed on color, silent motion picture films; and (2) the validity and sensitivity of heart rate change as an index of differential attention arousal elicited by changes within and between complex visual events. The research…

This study was interested in determining whether (1) novelty produces greater or less attention than familiarity and incongruity, and (2) if children's labeling behavior was related to their attentive behavior. Using 3- to 5-year-old children, the results indicate that attention, at least for the stimuli presented, is an increasing function from…

The human infant is now considered capable of active informational interaction with the environment. This study tested certain hypotheses concerning the nature of that interaction. These hypotheses, developed partly from Piaget's work, are (1) that repeated visual encounters with a stimulus pattern leads first to attentional preference for that…

A sequence of studies compared two types of discrimination formation: errorless learning and trial-and-error procedures. The subjects were three boys and five girls from a university preschool. The children performed the experimental tasks at a typical match-to-sample apparatus with one sample window above and four match (response) windows below.…

The purpose of these four studies (two pilot studies and two experiments) was to investigate the effects of verbal processes and dimensional preferences in children's learning and transfer. Experiment I investigated the effect of verbal instructions upon motor responses. Discriminate verbal instructions produced statistically significant higher…