A new method for determining the durations of mental events, the method of special effects, was developed and applied to a series of three experiments. The method measures the effects of various context stimuli on the speed of responses to a probe stimulus. By varying the interval between onset of context and probe, the time courses of these…

In an attempt to replicate and extend previous findings on autonomic arousal and responsivity in children with minimal brain dysfunction (MBD), pupil size, heart rate, skin conductance, and skin temperature were recorded from 32 MBD and 45 control children (6-13 years old). (Author/CL)

The time taken to name 56 drawings of objects on five separate occasions were analyzed for 21 ESN(M) children (i.e., moderately educationally subnormal) and 21 ESN(S) children (i.e., severely educationally subnormal), matched for picture-naming vocabulary. Results were discussed in terms of the Oldfield (1964) and Lachman (1973) models of lexical…

Boys (N=55) aged 8-11, categorized as impulsives by the Matching Familiar Figures test, participated in a study comparing the effects of three different techniques, designed to change an impulsive cognitive style on response accuracy and response latency. Subjects trained to increase response latency did show a significant increase in latency.…

Longstreth's critique of Jensen's research on the relationship of IQ to individual differences in visual reaction time (RT), measured in the Hick paradigm, is said to have numerous errors of fact and interpretation, some trivial and some of theoretical importance. (Author/LMO)

Measures of verbal intelligence and abstract reasoning were taken on a group of 31 college-aged and 32 elderly adults, together with mental-processing rates associated with choice reaction time, primary memory scanning, and lexical decoding. Group means showed that verbal IQ and lexical decoding were intact in the elderly subjects. (Author/LMO)

Relationships between intelligence test scores and measures derived from reaction time and perceptual speed procedures were investigated. Only three reaction time measures produced correlations greater than .25 with a general intelligence factor. Test-retest reliability of reaction time measures was low. The reaction time-intelligence relationship…

The data indicated that disadvantaged children required more time to process visual information than did middle-class children, but the processing speed for the 2 groups tended to become more similar as grade level was increased. (Author)

Total reaction time for dyslexic children was found to be longer than for normal children, suggesting that a modification of the study task might be useful for the early prediction of reading disability. (GS)

Exercise may postpone the deterioration in response speed that generally appears in the motor system of the aging by maintaining the nigrostriatal dopaminergic system in the brain. Exercise may also ameliorate symptoms of Parkinson's disease. Results of laboratory studies involving animals and rats are reported. (Author/PP)

Gender schema theory proposes that sex typing derives from gender-based schematic processing, particularly from the self-concept itself being assimilated to the gender schema. In two studies sex-typed individuals were found to have a greater readiness to process information (including information about the self) in terms of the gender schema.…

Three evaluations (general preference, balance, and dynamics) were made for paintings presented simultaneously in artist-created and mirror-image views. For short (5 second) exposures, results showed consistent selection over diverse contents of paintings with a left-to-right figure sequence. Implications for perception and aesthetics are…