Illustrates how nonverbal elements, either inherent in the text or incorporated into the reading lesson, can be used to facilitate students' foreign language reading comprehension. Suggestions for using visual information strategies for prediction, overall comprehension, main points comprehension, and intensive comprehension help students to…

This study examined empirically the functionality of sign language and iconic communication book symbols in community settings. Subjects were two adolescent students with autism. Results demonstrated successful communication by the students with communication books but not with signs. (Author/JDD)

Two experiments with moderately mentally retarded students found that (1) adequate verbal instruction had a modest but significant effect on the subjects' ability to blend consonant sounds, and (2) training without pictorial prompts resulted in better blending than training with pictorial prompts. (Author/DB)

Examines the performance of normal and disabled readers in recognizing whether orally presented letter strings represent real words. Finds that disabled readers have difficulty in making available the full range of semantic cues when processing stimuli in an acoustic form, supporting a verbal-processing deficit hypothesis of reading disability.…

A study of the acquisition of mands (requests) and tacts (labels) relating to food and eating utensils in three individuals with severe mental retardation revealed that responses acquired as tacts did not readily occur as mands, but spontaneous manding was developed through a stimulus control transfer procedure. (MSE)

Three methods by which hearing adults process speechread information are discussed: selective adaptation, immediate memory, and repetition priming. Also discussed are mental representations of speech by hearing-impaired and hearing children, infants' responses to speechread stimuli compared to other stimuli, infants' speechreading of a foreign…

This study observed a classroom of 15 students (ages 3 to 11) with behavior disorders, using amount of teacher attention to generate hypotheses about problem behavior function which were then validated in individual functional assessments. For 14 of the students, accurate hypotheses were efficiently generated by noting how teachers distributed…

Evaluated the effect of pacifiers and sucrose stimulation on the heart rate, coordination, and behaviors of normal infants and infants born to methadone-maintained mothers. Found that pacifiers stimulated immediate changes in all behaviors, which returned to baseline levels when pacifiers were removed. Sucrose stimulation precipitated gradual…

Examines techniques for using photographic evidence and photo-interviewing in evaluation and research. Reasons for using photo-interviewing are discussed, including prompting recall and acting as stimuli and verifiers of perception; and two examples are given, one involving evaluation with faculty and graduate students and one involving research…

Five experiments examined the role of global and local cues in memory retrieval in infancy. Results showed that infants encode and remember for substantial periods of time not only the shape of figures displayed in their periphery but also the global organization of these figures. They also adapt this information when responding to new events.…

A teacher of students with hearing impairments describes the development, organization, and uses of an extensive file of trading card-sized pictures. The pictures are particularly useful for teaching language concepts to these children. (DB)

Investigates the dominance of global versus local visual properties in four-month-old infants as a function of individual differences in fixation duration. Suggests that long-looking infants process visual information more slowly than short-looking infants, and there may be qualitative differences in the manner in which the two groups of infants…

Observed the reactions of 3.5-month-old infants looking at a carrot that should have but did not appear in a window after passing behind a screen. The results of this and several similar experiments indicated that 3.5-month-old infants are able to represent and reason about hidden objects. (BC)

Six-month-old infants recognize a cue 24 hours after training in the original context but not in a different one. It is demonstrated that this retrieval deficit could be overcome if infants are briefly and passively exposed to a novel context. Concludes that each training episode is encoded in terms of the context in which it occurs. Contains 48…

Provides a critical analysis of theoretical foundations concerning interactive video instruction (IVI). Theories and related research regarding multimedia interactivity, visual features, motivation, and learner control in IVI are reviewed; and the theoretical models of Hansen (relating to skill acquisition) and Clark and Sugrue (relating to…