In this research review of basic issues in learning disabilities, definitions, possible causes, prevalence, and identification of learning disabilities are discussed. Characteristics of learning disabled individuals are considered under five headings: perceptual and perceptual-motor disabilities, problems with attention and hyperactivity,…

A study tested two hypotheses concerning credibility (an auditor's attitude toward a source) and arousal (attention level of an auditor): (1) the effect on learning of credibility will interact with the effect of the vigilance level of auditors, and (2) under conditions of low arousal, auditors will learn significantly more from a message if it is…

The principles of behavior analysis and basic behavioral definitions were utilized by clinical pharmacy students within an interdisciplinary setting to recognize and reinforce the spontaneously occurring on-task desirable behaviors of an 8-year-old hyperactive, attention deficit disordered child. Data gathered by pharmacy students from a case…

Lack of attentional control--inability to concentrate--has often made the difference between successful and unsuccessful performance on the part of athletes. Attention is controlled neurologically by a very complex interaction of a large portion of the cerebrum and is not localized to any one structure. The mechanism involves a memory retrieval…

A total of 150 undergraduate students randomly assigned to five experimental groups studied ten paragraphs with questions interspersed at different locations in the text. Performance on incidental items was significantly lower (p < .05) in the question before (QB) than in the question after (QA), question before and after (QBA), and the…

Soviet neuropsychologist Sokolov's notions of tonic and phasic orienting responses and of defense responses are examined for relevance to individual information processing. The phasic orienting response provides an index to attention and to information demands generated by the cerebral cortex. The sum of orienting responses elicted by a message…

Three experiments in auditory selective attention form the basis of this investigation of cross-cultural differences among the ethnic groups of the Ibo and Yoruba adolescents of Nigeria. A sample of 200 16-year-olds were randomly drawn from four secondary schools. Yoruba adolescents showed superior performance in a task-involving the repetition of…

When 77 college students were asked a certain type of question after every four pages of a 48-page oceanography text that they were reading, it was found that the text information relevant to questions was learned better than text information irrelevant to questions. Furthermore, reading times and probe reaction times on a secondary task were…

Selective attention was assessed in second, fourth, and sixth grade reflective and impulsive children with an incidental learning task using pictures (animal-household object pairs) or shapes (colored forms) as stimuli. By the sixth grade, reflective children displayed less incidental learning and greater central learning than impulsive children…

The relationship between selective attention and learning is investigated in this paper. It is proposed that two forms of attention exist: (1) inspectional attention, which is a simple matching pocess where perceived stimuli are compared with an internal model of the stimulus for which the individual is searching, and (2) comprehensional…

A total of 48 8- to 14-week-old infants were presented with a non-contingently moving visual stimulus and the infants' visual attention was measured. Infants who exhibited decrements in attention to the non-contingent stimulus showed recovery in attention when the same stimulus was made to move contingent upon a motor response. Moreover, wisual…

THE EFFECTS OF SPECIFIC OPERANT AND MODELING PRINCIPLES ON INCREASING ATTENTIVE (TASK-ORIENTED) CLASSROOM BEHAVIOR OF HYPERACTIVE CHILDREN WERE STUDIED. THE METHODS OF BEHAVIORAL MODIFICATION USED IN THE STUDY WERE DISCRIMINATION-MODELING AND OPERANT CONDITIONING. SUBJECTS WERE 24 STUDENTS FROM GRADES 1 THROUGH 4 WHO WERE JUDGED HYPERACTIVE BY…

Studies the nature and development of perceptual estimation in a task requiring the coordination of spatial dimensions. (BD)

Repeated measures of the frequency of paper towel litter, unflushed toilets, dirty sinks, and running water faucets were used to evaluate effectiveness of contingent teacher praise for appropriate bathroom use by preschool children. Contingent praise for appropriate bathroom behaviors resulted in markedly decreased frequencies of four target…

The predictive relation between neonatal behavior and temperament at 24 months was examined for 67 infants selected from the full socioeconomic status (SES) distribution. Initial ratings were made when the infants were one to four days old. Irritable neonates were rated as more upset, less attentive to stimuli, and less responsive to the staff at…