This article describes basic applications of an adaptive telephone device for deaf-blind persons with speaking voices. The deaf-blind caller poses questions requiring one-word answers, and the device vibrates in response to touch-tone pulses from the other party. Specific suggestions for such uses as making appointments and emergency calls are…

Argues that the United States government suppressed Frank Capra's 1944 documentary, "The Battle of China," because it lacked the visual framework of arguments evidenced by the other films in Capra's "Why We Fight" series. Investigates Capra's portrayal of fundamental American values through the visual contrast techniques of…

Tactile cues were provided to a 19-year-old deaf, blind, and mentally retarded individual to guide her performance on packaging tasks. The tactile prompts effectively guided her on the training task and were also generalized to novel tasks and cues. Continued use of the cues was necessary to maintain performance. (Author/JDD)

Illustrates how nonverbal elements, either inherent in the text or incorporated into the reading lesson, can be used to facilitate students' foreign language reading comprehension. Suggestions for using visual information strategies for prediction, overall comprehension, main points comprehension, and intensive comprehension help students to…

This study examined empirically the functionality of sign language and iconic communication book symbols in community settings. Subjects were two adolescent students with autism. Results demonstrated successful communication by the students with communication books but not with signs. (Author/JDD)

Two experiments with moderately mentally retarded students found that (1) adequate verbal instruction had a modest but significant effect on the subjects' ability to blend consonant sounds, and (2) training without pictorial prompts resulted in better blending than training with pictorial prompts. (Author/DB)

Examines the performance of normal and disabled readers in recognizing whether orally presented letter strings represent real words. Finds that disabled readers have difficulty in making available the full range of semantic cues when processing stimuli in an acoustic form, supporting a verbal-processing deficit hypothesis of reading disability.…

A study of the acquisition of mands (requests) and tacts (labels) relating to food and eating utensils in three individuals with severe mental retardation revealed that responses acquired as tacts did not readily occur as mands, but spontaneous manding was developed through a stimulus control transfer procedure. (MSE)

Three methods by which hearing adults process speechread information are discussed: selective adaptation, immediate memory, and repetition priming. Also discussed are mental representations of speech by hearing-impaired and hearing children, infants' responses to speechread stimuli compared to other stimuli, infants' speechreading of a foreign…

This study observed a classroom of 15 students (ages 3 to 11) with behavior disorders, using amount of teacher attention to generate hypotheses about problem behavior function which were then validated in individual functional assessments. For 14 of the students, accurate hypotheses were efficiently generated by noting how teachers distributed…

Evaluated the effect of pacifiers and sucrose stimulation on the heart rate, coordination, and behaviors of normal infants and infants born to methadone-maintained mothers. Found that pacifiers stimulated immediate changes in all behaviors, which returned to baseline levels when pacifiers were removed. Sucrose stimulation precipitated gradual…

Examines techniques for using photographic evidence and photo-interviewing in evaluation and research. Reasons for using photo-interviewing are discussed, including prompting recall and acting as stimuli and verifiers of perception; and two examples are given, one involving evaluation with faculty and graduate students and one involving research…

Five experiments examined the role of global and local cues in memory retrieval in infancy. Results showed that infants encode and remember for substantial periods of time not only the shape of figures displayed in their periphery but also the global organization of these figures. They also adapt this information when responding to new events.…

A teacher of students with hearing impairments describes the development, organization, and uses of an extensive file of trading card-sized pictures. The pictures are particularly useful for teaching language concepts to these children. (DB)

Investigates the dominance of global versus local visual properties in four-month-old infants as a function of individual differences in fixation duration. Suggests that long-looking infants process visual information more slowly than short-looking infants, and there may be qualitative differences in the manner in which the two groups of infants…