This report describes seven basic experiments designed to further elucidate the nature and function of two types of organization imposed by subjects in a free-recall type of memory task. The experiments involved verbal stimulus materials and employed college students as subjects. The two types of organization investigated were category clustering,…

The relationship between visual stimulus intensity and directional finger movements was examined in infants of two age groups (16 infants, 10 to 15 weeks old, and 8 infants, 20 to 25 weeks old). Two hypotheses derived from Schneirla's Approach-Withdrawal Theory were examined: (1) that responses of the younger, but not of the older infants, would…

Elementary school students and adults were presented with a paired comparison task of visual complexity in which contour and presence or absence of structure in the patterns were manipulated. Results indicated that complexity judgments of all subjects were affected by the presence of structure at lower levels of contour. (GO)

Preschool, third grade and fifth grade children were presented with two choice-reaction time experiments in which probe stimulus quality was manipulated, to measure the effects of probe stimulus degradation at three developmental levels. Results support the hypothesis that children and adults employ similar strategies in preprocessing degraded…

Adult subjects viewed pictures at brief intervals, testing their reactions to informative objects--those not redundant with or predictive of the rest of the picture, such as a tractor in an underwater scene. Results indicated that observers fixate earlier, more often, and longer on informative objects. (Author/SJL)

Lateralization of response to the suggestion of a sensation was recorded in 100 psychiatric patients (16-60 years old) and related to their handedness. (Author)

Examines the kinds of information children encode and remember from complex pictures and attempts to determine whether there are developmental changes in the kinds of information processed. Subjects were first, third, and fifth grade children. (BD)

In Experiment I, the effects of a verbal warning, such as is used in Overcorrection, delivered contingently on the stereotyped mouthing behavior of two 10-year-old autistic/retarded children were examined. (Author)

A naming task using primary and secondary hues and achromatic stimuli was given to 669 preschool children. Results showed age and sex differences in performance and revealed an acquisition order similar to that found in related research and also similar to the proposed evolutionary order across cultures. (Author/JMB)

This study examined (1) whether subjects of different ages tend to rely on different kinds of visual information when given a choice; and (2) whether the ability to use spatial and identity information accurately in a recognition task changes developmentally. (Author/SB)

Sixty-four children in grades 2 and 5 were asked to recall items from six successively presented sets of categorized pictorial stimuli using one of four types of retrieval cues. Significant effects of grade level and type of cue (favoring subcategory cues) were found. (Author/JMB)

This study investigated 17-week-old infants' response to discrepancy in visual patterns as a function of rate of habituation. (BRT)

The relationship between discriminability of scaling stimuli and assessed dimensional dominance was investigated in three studies. Results indicated that kindergarten children bring to the experimental situation a dimensional preference even when the values of all dimensions present are of equal and known discriminability. (GO)

The fundamental frequencies (Fo) of infant cries were analyzed to determine if mean cry Fo differed as a function of the infant's sex or due to the stimulus evoking the cry. Results indicate no significant differences in either; however, males exhibited a tendency to have higher mean Fo. (Author/KM)