A pictorial system allowing receptive communication was implemented with one severely mentally retarded (SMR) and two autistic and SMR children (8.5, 10.4, and 12.8 years old). Although those low functioning children had shown severe problems in learning manual signs, they were successfully taught pictorial representations as communication means.…

Examines the effects of having both a semantic and a superficial perceptual category for organizing lists of words in free recall. Discusses the effect of individual difference characteristics, such as personality characteristics of the subject, on the results. (EKN)

Compared pharmacological and social-learning influences on development of alcohol-related expectancies. Investigated adolescents in transition from nondrinking to adult drinking practices. Six expectancy factors repeated across age groups: physical tension reduction, diversion from worry, increased interpersonal power, magical transformation of…

Infants viewed two objects that bounced in synchrony with two percussion sounds in order to learn about the relationships between sound and object. Learning was revealed in two ways: in a search test and in a transfer test. (Author/DB)

Two experiments investigate the relationship between developmental trends for auditory selective attention, and dependence on central/incidental word relations. Subjects were 48 children each from first, fourth, and seventh grades, and 48 adults. (CM)

The extent to which an orienting activity exerts control over the encoding process was studied. Two experiments were reported in which associative meaningfulness was varied under conditions of semantic and nonsemantic processing. Both experiments showed effects of meaningfulness following both semantic and nonsemantic tasks. (Author/MH)

Tests the theory that culturally associated words in a pair and nonassociated words in a pair differ after a single study trial in terms of their frequency representation in memory. (Editor/RK)

Investigates whether it may still be possible to develop a word association test for assessing proficiency in a foreign language. A multiple-response word association test was constructed with careful consideration of prompt words as defining criterion. The test was administered to learners, and scores were correlated with C-test scores. Results…

Elaborative interrogation was compared to the construction of imaginary representations to determine its efficacy in fact learning. Four experiments, involving a total of 260 undergraduate students, indicated that elaborative interrogation is equally as powerful a learning procedure as is imaginary representation and that both are useful during…

Individual differences in retention, with an emphasis on their relationship with learning speed and other cognitive factors, were studied in 685 military recruits. In all of the forgetting conditions, the fastest learners remembered more and relearned faster. Results support the existence of individual differences in retention. (SLD)

The paper discusses general types of nonverbal behavior (NVB) and encourages teachers to use NVB influences in the classroom. (Contains eight references.) (LB)