Patterns of bureaucratization and democratization in voluntary organizations may be explained by four principles of embryology: (1) the irreversibility of embryological development, (2) the canalization or branching of developmental pathways, (3) the induction of developmental change by the interaction of internal stimuli, and (4) the…

To determine the auditory acuity levels and responsiveness of seven deaf blind multihandicapped young children, the authors developed systematic observation procedures that can be used by parents, teachers, and teacher aides. The advantages of this approach and suggestions for further work are described. A case study is reported. (Author)

This study, designed to determine whether contextual organizers presented before prose passages can improve learning and retention among undergraduates with no prior knowledge of the subject, compared the effects of two types of organizers--images and their verbal equivalents--as well as organizers versus a control group. Twenty-five references…

Children's abilities to judge "who is older" without using size as a cue were studied. Five-year-olds were better able to discriminate age than four-year-olds but were not equal to adults. No significant sex differences were found. (Author/RD)

A model of context effects in perception is applied to perception of letters. Perception results from excitatory and inhibitory interactions of detectors for visual features, letters, and words. The model produces facilitation for letters in pronounceable pseudowords as well as words and accounts for rule-governed performance without any rules.…

The hypothesis that overall-similarity relations structure both adults' and children's classifications of heterogeneous objects (objects that differ in a variety of ways) was supported in two experiments. When objects varied simultaneously on many dimensions, adults and children constructed classifications that maximized within-category similarity…

To examine developmental aspects of auditory sensory memory, a series of experiments was conducted on the stimulus suffix effect with the primary variables being age of subject (7 and 11 years), rates of presentation, and length of list. Effects were nearly identical across age groups when a fast presentation rate was used. (Author/DB)

Studied male students who viewed an aggressive television program or a neutral one. Half of the students were then angered by a confederate. Results indicated angered men who had seen the aggressive film were most aggressive and exhibited the lowest average pulse rates both before and after shock delivery. (Author/JAC)

Two studies were conducted with 8- and 10-year-old children to examine sources of age and skill differences in verbal analogical reasoning. Discussion focuses on the child's "problem space" for the analogy task and possible differences in task understanding that lead to strategy and process differences in older versus younger and skilled versus…

Eleven infants with Down's syndrome and 10 of 11 nonhandicapped infants operated an automatic device which enabled them to choose to listen to nursery rhymes sung or played on musical instruments. Both groups preferred the singing, and the Down's Syndrome infants had much longer response durations for the more complex auditory stimuli. (Author/DB)

Human and geometric forms were presented to 12-month-old male infants to determine if infants with a large number of minor physical anomalies would show different habituation than infants with a small number. Differences were found in dishabituation and in response decrement. (Author/RH)

Describes three experiments designed to determine whether grapheme-to-phoneme rules are automatically applied when a word pattern is encoded. Concludes that grapheme-to-phoneme translation is a natural response to written words, at least when naming is required, and that mediation by visual mechanisms can be ruled out. (Author/MES)

Effects of target-noise similarity on the ability to discriminate between two target letters were investigated. Performance was low when the noise letter shared the same name as the target. Thus, interletter interference effects cannot be explained in terms of inhibition between visual features. A "cognitive masking" hypothesis is proposed.…

This case study reviews a remediation program developed for a hyperkinetic school child. An important element of the program is the verbal portion of the therapist-student interaction. This consists of training in physical skills, encouragement, challenges, and conditioning the hand and verbal signals. (Author/AL)

Sixty-four 3- and 4-year-olds were asked to identify another's view of a spatial array either verbally or by picture selection. Results indicate that verbalization leads to substantially more correct responses. Girls' performance was significantly better than boys' performance across both response modes. (Author/DB)