Examines the development of a computational model of auditory grouping processes informed by psychoacoustic experimentation. The experimental theme was to quantify the contribution of grouping principles, rather than simply to demonstrate their existence. This article demonstrates the importance of avoiding prespecified procedures for grouping…

A meta-analysis was conducted of 22 studies in which verbal stimuli were used as targets in episodic memory tasks. Of the 24 comparisons, 21 supported the hypothesis that these tasks require self-initiated operations and display a gradation of age-related deficits. (SK)

Suggests that the findings in the study by Blass and Ciaramitaro reported in this monograph support the claim that two systems of infants' behavior state regulation accessible by oral stimulation are mediated by different neural pathways. Discusses the findings in light of the immediate aims of the study itself and for the broader context of…

Forty-eight individuals sorted picture cards according to basic (easy) or superordinate (difficult) categories, while being measured on response time to auditory probes (as an index of attention to the primary task). Subjects without mental retardation allocated more attention to difficult tasks. Those with mental retardation gave similar…

Relationship between stimulus type (numeric or verbal) and type of precocity (mathematical and verbal) was studied in 104 gifted young adolescents through tasks measuring working memory. The relationship between type of stimulus and type of precocity suggests underlying differences between verbally and mathematically precocious youth in memory…

This paper presents a new procedure called TREEFAM for estimating ultrametric tree structures from proximity data confounded by differential stimulus familiarity. The objective is to quantitatively filter out effects of stimulus unfamiliarity. Superiority of TREEFAM over conventional methods is illustrated through a Monte Carlo study and an…

Twenty-four- and 30-month-old children were presented with a picture that showed the location of a hidden toy and were then asked to find the toy. The 30-month olds, but not the 24-month-olds, were successful in retrieving the toy. Concludes that 24-month olds did not interpret the pictures as representations of reality. (BC)

This literature review discusses 21 studies on facial emotion recognition by persons with mental retardation in terms of methodological characteristics, stimulus material, salient variables and their relation to recognition tasks, and emotion recognition deficits in mental retardation. A table provides comparative data on all 21 studies. (DB)

The capacity of six-month-old infants to maintain information in working memory for several seconds was studied using two versions of an oculomotor delayed response task. The results indicated that infants maintained information about stimulus locations in working memory for three to five seconds. (MDM)

Children and adults learned associations between line length and color. Subjects were then presented with pairs of colors and asked to choose the color that had been associated with the longer line. For all ages, choice reaction times were related to differences in, and ratios of, line lengths. (BC)

This study compared early vocal productions of preschool children with severe-profound hearing loss recorded with and without the use of a tactual device (Tactaid II). Their vocalizations are described in a hierarchical manner utilizing a three-tiered analysis that identifies "speech-like" vocalizations and transcribes those…

The major facts of motion perception are summarized, and three major problems regarding motion perception for moving objects, stable environments, and locomotion in a stable environment are elaborated. A hierarchy of motion types is presented. Evidence that the stimulus for motion is relational is considered. (SLD)

Two experiments examined the hypothesis that aging is associated with an increase in schema-related influences on memory performance. Attention allocated during the study was disrupted more by lack of scene organization in older adults. There were relatively systematic age differences for retention. (RH)

Examined instrumental learning in premature infants by providing 45 infants at 33 weeks conceptual age with either a teddy bear that "breathed" quietly at the infant's respiration rate (BB) or a nonbreathing bear (NBB). Over a two-week period, infants provided with the BB decreased their latency to contact the bear; infants exposed to the NBB…

Three experiments tested whether four-day-old infants can discriminate multisyllabic utterances on the basis of the number of syllables or the number of phonemes. The results provided no evidence that infants were sensitive to a change in number of phonemic constituents. (MDM)