Matching-to-sample skills are involved in language acquisition and reading and counting abilities. The rapid, even errorless, induction of matching performances in young children and 28 individuals with mental retardation (ages 11-20) was demonstrated through the structuring of a visual array that promoted detection of the relevant stimulus.…

Three experiments investigated discrimination and memory of 5.5-month-olds for videotapes of women performing different activities (blowing bubbles, brushing hair, brushing teeth) or static displays after a 1-minute and a 7-week delay. Findings demonstrate the attentional salience of actions over faces in dynamic events to 5.5-month-olds. Findings…

Three experiments examined development of perceptual causality in 3- to 9-year-olds. Findings indicated that participants of all ages assigned contact events (A moves toward B, which moves upon contact) to the physical domain and non-contact events (B moves before contact) to the psychological domain. Participants chose causality more often for…

Explores the relations between parent gazing and touching and infant gazing on the part of boys, girls, mothers, and fathers. Patterns of early parent-infant social play behaviors appear to differ with both infant and parent gender. (Author/BB)

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)

Tests whether aural discrimination is significantly better when visual-spatial stimuli are paired with melodic phrases. Results suggest that the use of visual clues paired with melodies is generally an effective aid to aural discrimination among fourth-grade subjects. Recommends further research on the use of different visual stimuli. (LS)

Examines the effect of organizational word-visuals which are designed to facilitate accurate and efficient storage of new material within the learner's cognitive structure, resulting in better recall. Concludes that word-visuals can increase learner's recall of factual information from mediated instruction and from textual materials. (RS)

Five profoundly mentally retarded adolescents and adults were taught to respond to an auditory-visual complex stimulus. Later, the auditory component alone was presented, and three subjects did not respond. These subjects then received a fading program which successfully established auditory stimulus control with two subjects. (MSE)

In three experiments, three normal preschoolers were presented with sorting tasks ordinarily insoluble for four-year-olds. Found that, although the subjects had difficulty correctly sorting the pictures when told what criterion to sort by, they could provide correct answers when asked what they were looking for. This self-instructional effect was…

Describes an in-depth, comprehensive method that enables students to understand the basic concepts of visual perception. (JRH)

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…

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)

Studied the organization of arousal and attention processes in 138 neurologically at-risk neonates by examining visual preferences when infants were in 3 arousal conditions that involved light panel stimuli. There were no differences in preferences in the two conditions that caused the most arousal. (LB)

Children and adults were more likely to claim a word was presented as a picture than vice versa. Results indicated the absence of developmental differences in reality monitoring and similarity in representational processes of children and adults. (BC)