In a study of individual differences in long-term memory access, university undergraduates verified (1) whether an item was a member of a category; (2) whether two items belonged in the same category; and (3) whether two words had the same name. Reaction times from these tasks were correlated with verbal ability, as measured by performance on a…

A major contribution of information-processing theory to the psychology of remembering is the concept of memory or information retrieval. Several theories of the fact retrieval processes of the human memory, which constitute a substrate for any cognitive ability requiring stored information, have drawn heavily on certain data processing…

The feasibility of completely automating the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) was tested, and item response latencies were compared with other MMPI item characteristics. A total of 26 scales were successfully scored automatically for 165 subjects. The program also typed a Mayo Clinic interpretive report on a computer terminal,…

A system for classifying perceptual-motor tasks was devised for the purpose of distinguishing the kinds of training strategy appropriate for each task. A rationale is presented and various task elements are delineated in terms of cue functions, image or mediational functions, and movement tendency. The defined task elements were used in…

Presented are the proceedings of the Mississippi Perceptual-Motor Symposium, April 20-21, 1973. Included are papers on motor development, models for perceptual motor programming, children with minimal brain damage, effects of learning games or academic abilities, research on perceptual motor measures, and programs for motor development. (JB)

To replicate and extend the results of a previous study, this project investigated the effects of behavioral objectives and/or rules on computer-based learning task performance. The 133 subjects were randomly assigned to an example-only, objective-example, rule example, or objective-rule example group. The availability of rules and/or objectives…

Two groups of five preschool children were trained to press a key for marbles for four sessions of variable ratio reinforcement (VR6). Subsequently, response decrement for the groups was compared during conditions of fixed and variable differential reinforcement of other behavior (DRO and VDRO). Fixed DRO was more effective for decreasing response…

The present study, by requiring subjects to decide whether the two words in a stimulus pair have the same or different meanings, is an attempt to measure the time necessary to encode a printed word into a representation of its meaning which is available for subsequent matching. (Author)

A sample of 107 subjects including kindergarteners, fifth graders, high school sophomores, parents of kindergarteners, and master artists were presented with a 108-item color perception test to investigate surface color perception at these age levels. A set of surface color perception rules was generated. (GO)

Three experiments are reported regarding reaction time. Letter comparison time was found to increase when other irrelevant letters were present, regardless of whether or not the letters made up a word or a word-like configuration. Word comparison time was found to increase when distractors were similar to targets. (Author/RM)

The author attempts to obtain some new evidence on simple addition processes in adults in order to evaluate the two additon models offered by Groen and Parkman (1972); a simple counting model and a more complex retrieval model, involving direct access and counting. (Author/RK)

Evaluates possible differences in the cognitive representations of semantic categories between children and adults independent of spontaneous memory skills. Response latencies on a classification task were compared for second, fourth, and sixth grades and college students. (Author/MP)

The ability of subjects to scan only one of two sets of items in short-term memory was investigated as a function of the similarity between the items in the two sets, the type of test used to evaluate retention of sets, and the number of items in each set. Results indicated that this one-set scan ability is limited by the capacity of short-term…

Sixty children were individually administered the Matching Familiar Figures Test and the Bender Gestalt Test. A significant relationship was found between errors on the Bender Gestalt Test and impulsivity. Specifically, increased or decreased loops, change in angulation, loops for circles, and circles for dots or dots for circles were all…

Three predictions from the model of extraversion put forward by Brebner & Cooper (1974) were tested in a simple reaction time task. What emerges is a more coherent picture of the extravert showing him to be prone to two types of S-inhibition, the one generated by feedback and when response demands are low, and dependent upon R-excitation to…