Describes an investigation comparing visual and auditory clues effect on estimates of speakers' heights and weights, to determine if voice alone conveys as much information as visual clues. The results indicate that the differences between estimates based on photographs and those based on speech recordings are, on the average, very small.…

The purposes of the study involving four severely handicapped students (11 to 16 years old) were to examine whether the acquisition of instruction- following behavior is facilitated by the presentation of manual signs with verbal instructions and whether manual and verbal expressive abilities are acquired as an indirect result of receptive…

Memory for sequences of briefly presented letters was examined to discover the effects of intraserial repetition and acoustic contrast on recall of a critical letter pair. (Editor)

A study of 22 children with autism and 19 children with mental retardation found that, when prompted, school-age and adolescent subjects with autism did not differ from children with mental retardation in production of functional play acts and situationally appropriate object substitution, but did produce fewer novel pretend play acts. (CR)

Discusses how treatment of memory disorders resulting from traumatic brain injury must extend beyond intervention strategies focusing on deficit reduction to embrace models centering on disability reduction. Disability oriented approaches that emphasize rehearsal and encoding strategies and the use of memory aids are described. (Author/CR)

Three studies used illustrated stories to examine preschoolers' understanding of emotional changes when memories of past events were cued by objects in the current environment. Found substantial development between 4 and 6 years in understanding the influence of mental activity on emotions. The strength and consistency of this knowledge was…

The effectiveness of two treatment strategies (verbal prompts and a physical prompt) on the independent drinking skills of a 17-year-old girl with cortical visual impairment was investigated. Results found that the physical prompt was highly effective in promoting the target behavior, whereas verbal prompts were less effective. (Author/CR)

Three experiments examined 4- to 10-month-olds' perception of audio-visual (A-V) temporal synchrony cues in the presence or absence of rhythmic pattern cues. Results established that infants of all ages could discriminate between two different audio-visual rhythmic events. Only 10-month-olds detected a desynchronization of the auditory and visual…

Three experiments explored infants' attention to conflicting cues at different ages. Found when stress and statistical cues indicated different word boundaries, 9-month-olds used syllable stress as a cue to segmentation while ignoring statistical cues. Seven-month-olds attended more to statistical cues than to stress cues. Results suggested…

Three experiments examined the memory-preserving effects of reactivation and reinstatement reminders following 6-month-olds' learning and forgetting of an operant task. Findings indicated that a single reactivation reminder extended infants' memory of an operant mobile task for 2 weeks, a single reinstatement extended it for 4 weeks. A single…

A study found that 4 boys (age 11) with mild disabilities were able to acquire the behaviors for instructive feedback stimuli when the stimuli were presented after trials on any of a set of target behaviors and could acquire instructive feedback behaviors during acquisition of or mastery of target behaviors. (Contains references.) (Author/CR)

Presents classroom procedure involving Telling, Requesting, and Coaching (TRC) to enhance reading and writing in diverse students as an alternative to probing for information without prompts to introduce lessons, which is confusing and time consuming. Notes how TRC facilitates students' recall by telling them the needed information, requesting…

This study with three adolescents with mental retardation examined whether the use of a simultaneous prompting procedure would result in improved performance when expressively identifying first aid materials. All three students learned the identifications and maintained them after training. Students also acquired and maintained some of the…

Partner sensitivity to communication behaviors of 24 presymbolic children (ages 16-35 months) with developmental disabilities was examined. Communication partners provided information regarding recognition of the children's communicative cues, and consistency of cue recognition and descriptions across partners. Results indicated wide individual…