Groups of 7 1/2-month-old infants heard 1 of 8 episodes consisting of no, slight, moderate, or large discrepancy between a habituated standard and a transformed auditory stimulus. Patterns of cardiac deceleration supported the hypothesis that attentiveness is an inverted-U function of the degree of discrepancy between stimulus event and schema.…

This study tested the assimilation of an auditory-visual stimulus configuration in 32 infants aged 15 to 16 weeks. The infants' discrimination of matched and mismatched auditory-visual stimuli indicated that infants by 4 months of age are capable of constructing bimodal schemata. (JMB)

Examines effects of audio and visual redundancy on recall and story understanding in television news. Indicates that college students who viewed voice-over news stories varying in amount of redundancy showed higher auditory recall and story understanding in the high-redundancy condition than in the lower redundancy conditions. Visual recall shows…

This study investigated the relationship of tonal pattern to tonal concept development and performance achievement of beginning instrumentalists. Tonal concept development was compared with technical skill development. Results indicate that tonal concept development improved the melodic sight-reading skills more successfully than the traditional…

A study compared the responsiveness to sound by normal infants and profoundly multihandicapped children. Results revealed that the profoundly multihandicapped subjects displayed relatively more reflexive than attentive type behaviors and exhibited fewer behaviors per response. (Author/CB)

Examines, in two experiments, 5-month-old infants' sensitivity to auditory-visual specification of distance and direction of movement. One experiment presented two films with soundtracks in either a match or mismatch condition; the second showed the two films side-by-side with a single soundtrack appropriate to one. Infants demonstrated visual…

Comparison of hyperactive and normal children indicated that hyperactive children did not show deficits in the ability to sustain attention, although signal detection analysis showed some lowered capacity in both focused and selective attention to targets. Subsamples of learning-disabled and neurologically impaired hyperactive children showed…

Examines the relationship between preschool children's (n = 96) cognitive processing of video (V) and audio (A) information on television under four conditions: A/V match, A/V mismatch, V alone, and A alone. Results suggest that in regular television programs the video material simply appears to be more salient and more memorable than the audio…

The major hypothesis of the study was not supported by the data. Brief exposure to perceptual deprivation did not facilitate reaction times in either the younger or older group. (Author)

A lesson involving tape recorders and group discussions dealing with the implications of noise for the individual and society.'' (Author/SP)

Study investigated the effects of a response-produced intense-noise stimulus (punishment) on the extinction of children's hitting behavior. (Author)