Examines the effects of repeated readings and attentional cues on measures of reading fluency and comprehension. Suggests that increasing fluency is a less efficient means of improving comprehension than presenting cues about comprehension. (MM)

Advances two processes describing the relationship between message behaviors and narrative comprehension that differ in the likelihood that specific interpretations will be drawn given the presence of message cues. Finds that, in general, cues biased young children toward drawing a particular representation but that fifth graders delayed choosing…

Two studies demonstrated that infants use referential cues to guide new word-object mapping as early as 19 to 20 months of age and that they understood that actions accompanying such labeling were not necessarily referential. These findings indicate that language learning is grounded in a relatively rich understanding of cues to reference, at…

Two experiments are described that confirmed previous contentions that there is an imperfect correspondence between subjects' pause reports and actual pauses in oral reading and that auditory cues represent only part of the picture. Semantic and linguistic cues also appear to have substantial effect on the accuracy of pause reports. (13…

Surveyed 100 older adults to determine kinds of memorabilia and cherished objects they would identify and how these were related to reminiscence and current mood as measured by Affect-Balance Scale. Found significant positive relationship between memorabilia and mood; total lack of cherished objects was associated with significantly lower mood…

Study examined ability of attention deficit hyperactive disorder (ADHD) children with and without learning disability to perceive nonverbal social cues. ADHD/LD children demonstrated significant difficulty in comparison to their peers in effectively perceiving paralanguage cues. This group also showed significant improvement on the Postures and…

Three experiments examined infants' processing of three-dimensional (3D) information in static images. Results indicated that 3-month olds are sensitive to 3D cues in static images. However, discrepancies based on these cues may not engage infants' attention like those based on fundamental features. (Author)

Six experiments involving a total of 112 college students demonstrate that a robust memory for visual context exists to guide spatial attention. Results show how implicit learning and memory of visual context can guide spatial attention toward task-relevant aspects of a scene. (SLD)

Reinvestigated claim that beginning readers exploit information from orthographic rime of clue words to help them decode unfamiliar words. Among the findings: children were able to use orthographic information from beginning, middle, and end of clue words to identify unfamiliar words, with clue word presentation enhancing the reading of…

This study investigated the effects of contextualization on fluency in 35 school-age children with either stuttering, language impairment, or normal fluency. Analysis of the children's discourse samples, half of which were produced with contextual cues, found stutterers demonstrated a significant reduction in frequency of stuttering in the…

Investigated in four experiments claims that young children's event recall can be facilitated by drawing. Found that object recall was enhanced by replacing objects on a board as they were recalled. Recall was reduced in 5- to 6-year-olds and not enhanced in older children by drawing the board and objects concurrently with or just prior to verbal…

This paper examines behavior interventions for echolalic behavior in children with autism, including verbal prompting (focusing on the echolalic behavior itself) and the cues-pause-point procedure (which employs the child's prerequisite skills to teach correct verbal responses). A review of the literature indicated that both techniques were…

Two experiments examined toddlers' ability to use cues to infer meaning of novel action words. Toddlers were taught labels for similar or dissimilar pairs of videotaped actions, with behavioral cues or eye gaze related to agents' intentions distinguishing similar events. Results showed that in year 2, children begin to consider…

Three experiments investigated effectiveness of activity outcomes as 5- to 7-year-olds' memory cues. Outcomes either were maintained during activity and preserved in the end product, or "disappeared" during activity and transformed in the end product. Findings indicated that memory for the activity varied with cue condition and with…

Four studies compared preschoolers' fast mapping of new proper and common names following indirect exposures requiring inference with their learning new names following ostensive cues. Found that inferential learning of names and learning by direct instruction were largely equivalent: learning from a situation with clear joint references…