A noted writer of fiction explores the role of imagination in the intellectual development of children and the need for imagination in various facets of daily lives and suggests ways of stimulating its use by children. (RBW)

The paper reviews the use of pictorial mnemonic strategies as an instructional tool for nonhandicapped and handicapped learners. Recent research has indicated that mildly handicapped learners can successfully employ fairly complex mnemonic strategies, and mnemonic strategies can be adapted to many different content areas. (Author/CL)

Two experiments were conducted to assess the relative effectiveness of stimulus shaping and "traditional" prompting procedures with six low-functioning retarded children (one-six years old). Stimulus shaping procedures required less training time than to criterion, resulted in fewer errors, required fewer and less intrusive therapist's prompts,…

The study assessed effects of a transfer of stimulus control procedure on acquisition and cross-setting generalization of manual signs with four profoundly retarded young adults. Results showed that individuals acquired the trained signs and maintenance and generalization across settings and persons occurred but was highly variable between and…

Forty-eight neonates were randomly assigned to view a moving stimulus either in the horizontal or the upright position, with or without added vestibular stimulation and with or without pacifier sucking. Results indicate that vestibular proprioceptive stimulation, provided horizontally or semi-vertically, significantly enhanced visual tracking.…

Serial habituation of visual fixations was investigated through a design permitting cross-sectional, within-subject longitudinal, cohort longitudinal, and time-lag analyses. Results suggested that for all ages habituation was under way to the parts of the stimulus in order of the realitive saliencies. No one methodology appeared to significantly…

Investigates the relative importance that the eyes and mouth play in the representation in memory of a human face. Systematically applies two kinds of transformation--masking the eyes or the mouths on photographs of faces--and observes the effects on recognition. (Author/RK)

A strong test of exposure effects was made by eliminating confounding demand characteristics through the use of a between-subject design. Each subject viewed novel stimuli at a single frequency level, and then rated them on several affective scales. (Editor)

The compulsory medical treatment of adults is discussed with regard to the legal authority relevant to the problem. Attention is directed toward the "right to die" issue, the public interest and individual freedom of conscious or religion, and the courts' dealing with the freedom of the individual to control his own body. (LBH)

Five developmental experiments examine the role of context in visual search. (Author/JH)

This study examined the extent to which actions of objects influence children's taxonomic categorization. Two types of action-based categories were examined: those in which the objects share similar actions; and those in which the objects have dissimilar actions. Perceptual features of the objects were dissimilar for all objects used in the study.…

This paper explains the brief stimulus preference procedure (SPA), which is designed to identify efficiently the effective reinforcers for children with autism and other developmental disabilities. SPA involves presenting the child with four items he/she generally responds well to plus one new item. After allowing the child to pick his preferred…

The present experiment supports the hypothesis that the letter is the basic perceptual unit in letter, nonword, and word identification. (Author)

The separate effects of stimulus and response relative frequency were studied in two choice reaction time tasks containing many: 1 stimulus-response (S-R) mappings and 2 levels of S-R compatability. (Editor)