Study based on M.A. Thesis submitted to Memphis State University (Meador, 1967).

The purpose of this study was to investigate the function of positive attentional cues as cognitive factors in the modification of fear responses in a desensitization-like treatment procedure. Positive attentional cues are defined as positively-valenced descriptors of the feared stimulus. Two groups of two subjects each were assessed as to the…

Attention has been studied in four major areas of research: 1) an orientation reaction which must be present before an organism can receive stimulation; 2) a mediating response which directs further action to the stimulus being presented; 3) a cognitive or perceptual state in which the organism selects certain stimuli and excludes others; and 4)…

Sixteen elementary school children were administered an auditory and visual vigilance task and their performance related to their off-task behavior in the classroom. In addition, the relationship of vigilance performance to teacher ratings of the children's behavior and to reading achievement scores was also assessed. (JB)

Parieto-occipital electroencephalograms were recorded during resting baseline intervals, during an initial instruction period, and during active performance on mental arithmetic and immediate recall tasks to determine if 10 learning disabled boys (10-12 years old) would show less alpha attenuation than 11 normal controls. (Author/CL)

The central purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of distractions in nonverbal problems on the problem solving behavior and performance of young children (grades 1-3) in 6 schools (N=360). Results indicated 66 percent of the subjects were distracted by irrelevant spatial-numerical or color attribute uses. (JC)

The Ravens Standard Progressive Matrices Test was administered to 48 subjects who then performed a card-sorting task under single- and competing-task conditions. Hick's Law and the Roth-Jensen procedure were used in task development. Complexity should have a more central role in speed of processing models of intelligence than ability to divide…

Distractible elementary students (N=44) were assigned to one of four experimental conditions, reflecting manipulations of reinforcement and task difficulty. For difficult tasks, students assigned to contingencies for correct academic performance alone were off-task more and scored significantly lower in academic performance than Ss receiving…

To examine differences between auditory selective attention abilities of normal and cerebral-palsied individuals, 23 cerebral-palsied and 23 normal subjects (5-21) were asked to repeat a series of 30 items in presence of intermittent white noise. Results indicated that cerebral-palsied individuals perform significantly more poorly when the…

Results of a study involving 5 high test-anxious poor readers failed to replicate an earlier study reporting selective attention deficits in the population. Further, there was a marginal tendency for older poor readers to be high test-anxious. (Author/CL)

Findings indicated no differences between 17 learning disabled and 32 normal elementary students on attention tasks, no difference in sustained attention, and no evidence of a developmental lag. A significant difference in attention was found favoring special classes over regular, small groups over large, and teacher-directed over independent…

The ingestion of methylphenidate in hyperactive children was studied in classroom and informal settings. The drug seems to improve tractibility and learning in situations involving clear-cut tasks demands and high compliance, yet leaves informal behavior undisturbed. (ST)

The hypothesis confirmed in this study is that high test-anxiety students performed more poorly on difficult material because they divided their time between personally relevant and task relevant concerns more than did low-anxiety individuals. (Author/KM)

Selective auditory attention skills of 21 learning disabled children as compared with the performance of 23 normal achievers (seven- to nine-years-old) were examined. Performance of the LD children was affected more than normal achievers under all distractor conditions. (Author/CL)

Analysis of the abnormalities present in autistic patients suggests that the manifestations of childhood autism correlate best with the manifestations of dysfunction in the frontal tier of the ring of phylogenetically older cortex and striatum. Emphasis is placed on disorders of motility, communication, and attention and perception. (Author)