A six-year-old nonvocal girl with autism who had acquired a variety of signs and imitative responses consistently failed to acquire a tact (labeling) repertoire. When procedures to transfer stimulus control from verbal to nonverbal stimuli were implemented, the subject quickly learned to tact all 18 target stimuli. (Author/DB)

The relationship between general intelligence and the ability to ignore irrelevant stimuli appearing in the same visual field as an attended target was studied for 167 college students. Results indicate that psychometric intelligence does not tap visual focused attention. (SLD)

The complex ideas of William James on emotion were oversimplified during his lifetime, with his emphasis on the interpretation of the stimulus largely overlooked. Damaging scientific consequences of this mischaracterization are described. (SLD)

The article by W. K. Estes marks a turning point in the mathematical learning theory movement. The central constructs were stimulus variability, stimulus sampling, and stimulus response association by contiguity, in a framework enabling prediction of response probability and latency. (SLD)

The accuracy and bias of estimates of whisker length based on box, line, and midgap plots were examined. For each type of graph, 20 different undergraduates (n=60) viewed 48 single-plot graphs. Whisker-length estimates for box and line plots were more accurate and less biased than those for midgap plots. (TJH)

Two experiments with 129 college undergraduates tested the conjoint retention model by having subjects learn an intact map and text and then see the map as a retrieval cue in its original or reorganized form. Subjects remember more when cued by the original, supporting the conjoint retention theory. (SLD)

Describes Image-Making, a workshop in creative bookmaking based on a series of simple, carefully structured, parallel verbal and visual activities. Explains how each teacher and student designed and created an individual book (of his or her own poems and visual images) and a large communal book. (MG)

This study found that, compared to measuring approach behaviors to a variety of stimuli, a forced-choice stimulus preference assessment used with four young children with severe mental retardation resulted in greater differentiation among stimuli and better predicted which stimuli would result in higher levels of responding when presented…

Event-related potentials (ERPs) of children and adults were measured while subjects observed pictures of facial expressions. Adults had greater ERP responses to happy than to angry faces, whereas children had greater ERP responses to angry than to happy faces. (BC)

Some speculations, often based on mutually incompatible theories, are reviewed about how blindness can affect the development of language and meaning. Issues covered include preverbal and verbal behaviors, the concept of verbalism, and language as a compensator. (10 references) (Author/LB)

This study compared 20 children (ages 8-14) with either autism or receptive developmental language disorder (RDLD) to 10 controls in their ability to detect frequent and infrequent randomly presented auditory stimuli. Only the children with autism demonstrated an abnormally small amplitude of the P3b, a component of the event-related brain…

Compared preschool children's reactions to an object described as fearful, positive, or neutral. When the object was described as fearful, younger children's reaction toward the object was inhibited, and older children responded less fearfully than when the object was described as neutral. Positive descriptions did not promote children's approach…

This study evaluated facilitated communication with 12 people living in an institutional autism program. On trials when facilitators and participants saw different pictures, the only "correct" labels were for pictures shown to the facilitators and not shown to the participants. Results suggest that the facilitators were unknowingly…

This study evaluated the peripheral and central auditory functioning (and thus the potential to perceive obstacles through reflected sound) of eight totally blind persons and eight sighted persons. The blind subjects were able to process auditory information faster than the control group. (Author/DB)

Assessed the effectiveness of exclusion or selection (modified trial-and-error) training in establishing auditory-visual conditional relations. Subjects were boys (ages 8 to 11) with learning problems in school. Found that exclusion training was significantly more effective in teaching new auditory-visual conditional relations and in generating…