Evaluation of a protocol for assessing leisure choice skills of seven older adults with severe disabilities involved either presentation with pairs of objects or pictures representing choices. Five participants demonstrated skills in making choices using objects and two demonstrated making choices using pictures. (Author/DB)

Three experiments examined whether newborns are sensitive to an operant-conditioning task involving unprepared relation between a response and a stimuli. Found that newborns tested under the High-Amplitude Sucking procedure were involved in an operant-learning situation, in that an increase in sucking rates could be obtained after an auditory…

A learner-centered extension approach was used to develop visual materials to teach Ghanian farmers about weed control. The method was inexpensive, easy to transport, and suitable for a low-literate audience. Evaluation revealed the need to train extension staff in use of the materials. (SK)

Examined which of the attentional operations underlying exogenous orienting (disengaging, shifting, and/or engaging) improves with age in children from 6 to 14 years old. Found that disengaging attention alone distinguished between younger and older children's performance, regardless of whether attention alone or attention and associated sensory…

Standard or enhanced Blissymbols, designed to represent familiar actions, attributes, and objects, were shown to 20 3 year olds, who guessed their meaning. The number of their guesses that referred to the enhancements was twice as great as the number that referred to the standard Blissymbol base. (Author/JDD)

The responses of 18 phonologically delayed children, aged 6-7, to 3 types of pictured stimuli were examined. Results indicated that black and white drawings were less frequently identified than either colored line drawings or colored photographs. (Author/JDD)

Mentally retarded and nonretarded adults (n=32) performed visual vigilance tests in which single digits were presented at either a fast or slow rate and the rate shifted without warning. Retarded observers detected fewer targets and made more false alarms than did nonretarded observers in all test conditions. (Author/JDD)

A semantic or a phonetic cue was given when necessary in an object-naming task involving 30 first grade children. Although the children who were poor readers named fewer objects than good readers, both groups of children benefited from phonetic cues. In contrast, semantic cues had relatively little effect. (Author/JDD)

Provides instructions for making and tips for using laptop flannel boards as portable and individual teaching tools. (MG)

This research review on tactual communication of speech discusses methods of communication intended for the tactual sense alone, issues related to tactual input as a supplement for speechreading, and issues related to developing new synthetic tactual aids and the roles such aids could play in treating people with profound hearing loss. (Author/JDD)

Confirms that infants, like older children, are capable of responding categorically to stimuli of different shapes if these are similar in hue. (PCB)

Studies the allocation of attention of 100 four- and five-year-olds on a selective attention task. Results suggest that preschoolers are capable of using selective strategies when the task is made meaningful by the inclusion of a familiar script that provides supportive cognitive context. (RJC)

Results of a study involving 30 infants of 14, 20, or 26 weeks confirm the existence of distinct developmental phases of attention during the visual preference procedure. Findings suggest a refinement of the use of fixation duration as the major dependent variable in the procedure. (RH)

Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded from infants shown sets of familiar faces presented frequently and infrequently, and a set of novel faces presented infrequently, and correlated with infant emotional behavior and cortisol levels. Found that infants scoring higher on the normative ERP factor were more distressed during parent…

Averaged cortically evoked potentials to frequency-modulated tones were obtained from 12 children with specific language impairment (SLI) and 12 controls. Responses from SLI children were not significantly different from those of normal language learners, indicating no difference between groups with respect to neural systems involved with…