Two studies examined whether preschoolers use whole-part juxtaposition to accurately interpret novel part terms. Results confirmed that children do use juxtaposition to guide learning of novel part terms and that such use was not due to memory effects nor to recognition of the grammatical frame accompanying juxtaposition. Children readily used…

Examines the perceptual cues used by three- and four-month-old infants to categorically distinguish perceptually similar animal species. Indicates that cues form the facial and head region provide the critical source of information that allows young infants to categorically differentiate cats and dogs and presumably a number of other animal…

A study examined the effectiveness of the Power Card Strategy in teaching sportsmanship skills to a 10-year-old girl with autism. The strategy incorporates special interests to teach and reinforce academic, behavior, and social skills. The strategy was effective in teaching sportsmanship skills and the behavioral generalized across multiple…

Explores the possibility that the first language and second language mental lexicon may be structurally similar, with depth of individual word knowledge determining a given word's degree of integration into the mental lexicon. Proposes a model for the process by which words are integrated into the mental lexicon and challenges the belief that a…

Sixteen adults with language/learning disabilities (L/LD) and 16 controls participated in a study testing sensitivity to word order cues that signaled grammatical versus ungrammatical word strings belonging to an artificial grammar. Participants with L/LD performed significantly below the comparison group, suggesting that this skill is problematic…

Four students (ages 10-14) with moderate mental retardation learned chained tasks with constant time delay and with the system of least prompts. Both strategies produced criterion-level performance; however, constant time delay was more efficient than least prompts in terms of number of sessions, percent of errors, and direct instructional time to…

The study investigated the effectiveness of using visual cues to highlight the seams of baseballs, to improve the hitting of curveballs by five undergraduate varsity baseball team candidates. Results indicated that subjects hit a greater percentage of marked than unmarked balls. (Author/DB)

Examines whether trained observers detect deception more accurately than untrained observers. Finds that trained observers judge veracity of low self-monitors and unrehearsed liars with higher deception detection accuracy. Reports that discrepancy between observers' actual ability to detect deception and certainty in their judgment accuracy is…

Thirty learning-disabled and 30 nonhandicapped intermediate grade children were assessed on memory performance for stimulus words, which were presented with congruent and noncongruent rhyming words and semantically congruent and noncongruent sentence frames. Both groups performed significantly better on words encoded using deep level congruent…

Results of five studies suggest that the availability of an object concept in sentences that preceded an unexpected story outcome was a critical determinant of the occurrence of an object inference. The thematic prominence of the object influences the use of the object in an inference. (RH)

Examines the use of pictures by different learners in different ways, and presents guidelines for using pictures in teaching culturally diverse children. The degree of complexity versus simplicity is discussed, the need for effective directional cues is emphasized, and depth and motion cues are described. (LRW)

Examined the processing of speech and nonspeech sounds by 23 reading-disabled children. Children were required to identify and report the order of pairs of stimuli. Children had difficulty with very brief tones and stop consonant syllables at short interstimulus intervals. (SAK)

This article describes instructional procedures for helping students with learning disabilities become more effective mnemonic keyword strategy users. The procedures involve providing a rationale, providing explicit strategy-attribution instruction, modeling strategy use with think-alouds, providing verbal practice, providing guided practice with…

Two hypotheses about how organizational signals influence text recall were tested with 274 college students who read and recalled a text with or without signals. Results are consistent with the hypothesis that organizational signals induce readers to change their text-processing strategies. (Author/SLD)

This article describes the physiological mechanisms involved in three-dimensional depth perception and presents a variety of distance and depth cues and strategies for detecting and estimating curbs and steps for individuals with impaired vision. (Author/DB)