Research supported by U.S. Office of Education contract OE-6-8934.

Five- to six-year-old children were fairly consistently able to match stick figures and abstract linear configurations representative of positive emotions (peacefulness, happiness, excitement, desire) but could not as consistently pair stick figures and abstract configurations representative of negative emotions (sadness, upset, cruelty, rage).…

A stochastic model for paired comparisons of multi-attribute social stimuli is proposed where one objective is to find the relative importance of the attributes for a judge. Is is related to the Bradley-Terry model where log-parameters are linear combinations of functions of the stimuli's attributes. This model neither assumes that the functions…

The efficacy of three types of prompt fading procedures used in teaching discrimination tasks was investigated in eight autistic and three nonautistic students (5 to 12 years old) with varying intellectual abilities. Results showed no significant difference in task acquisition between within stimulus distinctive, extra stimulus nondistinctive, and…

This study addressed three major questions pertaining to habituation of visual attention in infants: (1) does habituation occur gradually? (2) how do fast and slow habituators compare in their response to discrepancy? and (3) does intervening stimulation produce interference with infants' visual recognition memory? The subjects were 36 17-week-old…

Two experiments were performed to investigate how a stimulus (a film with scenes either in or out of order) in combination with a task (recalling facts or generating hypotheses about the film) affect whether or not a person responds to the stimulus with more than one discrete answer or thought (subjective response uncertainty). Specifically, this…

Word associations to 51 stimulus words selected from the Kent and Rosanoff stimulus list were obtained from 110 graduate and 75 undergraduate teacher trainees. Associations were analyzed so that comparisons between teacher-trainee associations and several adult normative collections could be made. Response homogeneity was found to increase…

The present study assessed the effects of a distinct visual stimulus (a light) associated with each component of a four-component chain of nonsense syllables. When these added lights were used to train the chains of nonsense syllables, speed of acquisition was unaffected, but errors were reduced, loss of previously acquired responses was reduced,…

Research was conducted on two selective attention systems in learning situations. The theoretical and experimental approaches are presented in a set of six papers. One paper considered directions in attention theory and five papers report experiments with pigeon and children subjects. The two attention systems are (1) coding response, which…

REPORTED HERE ARE RESULTS OF A STUDY INITIATED TO EXAMINE PRINCIPLES INVOLVED IN THE EXPERIMENTAL MODIFICATION OF VERBAL BEHAVIOR. SIXTEEN UNDERGRADUATE FEMALE VOLUNTEERS WERE REQUIRED TO PRODUCE A VERBAL RESPONSE UNDER MANIPULATED LIGHTING CONDITIONS. BASE LINE SCORES WERE OBTAINED FOR EACH SUBJECT UNDER DIMLIGHT CONDITIONS. PUSHBUTTON SCORES…

This paper was concerned with the perceptions that can result from a change in the length of the retinal image of a line. Conditions that lead either to the perception of a line of changing length and the perception of a line of constant length undergoing covering or uncovering by another object were examined. (Author/RK)

Two experiments are reported in which cardiac habituation of the orienting response to pure tone stimuli was studied in well-nourished and malnourished male Guatemalan infants. Results indicated a fundamental attentional deficit in the malnourished group. (GO)

Reports four experiments in which infants' recognition memory (defined by novelty preferences) was found to be improved by providing five- to seven-month-old infants with discriminable but related targets during the familiarization period. Facilitation of recognition was found for both photographs of faces and abstract patterns. (JMB)