This report tells of the procedures and results of a psychophysical study of 28 3.8-year-old-boys from the Harlem Training Center. In spite of an experimental situation that was something of an ordeal, some meaningful data was generated. The main area investigated in this study was the evoked-response indices of temporal processing, that is, the…

Based on previous studies with college students, this study investigated the hierarchy and creativity of responses in young children. According to the theory of hierarchies, the uncreative person initially produces stereotyped responses and soon runs out of alternatives, while the creative person initially has common ideas but subsequent ideas are…

Subjects learned and answered questions about four- or six-term linear orderings (e.g., Tom is taller than Dick, who is taller than Sam, who is taller than Pete). Such an ordering is comprised of some adjacent pairwise relations that are necessary to the establishment of the ordering (e.g., Tom is taller than Dick, Dick is taller than Sam), and…

After reading stories written in either chronological or flashback sequence, subjects made a decision about the underlying order of occurrence of two events. Results indicate that subjects based their responses on a memory representation, which preserved the input sequence of events. (Author/EJS)

Eighteen second- and third-grade children were assigned to each of six conditions formed by the factorial combination of constant interresponse intervals of zero, four, and eight seconds, and self-blame vs other-blame instructional sets. (Author/SBH)

Explores the idea that echoing in autistics differs from normal imitation and represents a different species of production. Subjects were five autistic children, ranging in age from 3 years 10 months to 6 years 8 months, and two normal children, aged 2 years 6 months and 3 years 11 months. (MP)

Used a reaction time paradigm to examine the behavior of young children and adults in a picture-identification task where the pictures presented were from both the child's and the adult's point of view (e.g., the underside of a table as well as the eating surface). (JMB)

Correlations between elementary sensory tasks and IQ scores support Galtonian theories of intelligence, which emphasize speed of signal encoding and transmission in the nervous system. Research involving 73 male Navy recruits indicates that such theories are warranted only when elementary tasks are viewed separately. Task complexity in…

By comparing the profile of "g" loadings for a set of psychometric test scores, it is shown that general intelligence is related to timed performance measures from perceptual-motor tasks, more strongly on more complex tasks. The profile of the "g" loadings was predictable from the response-time (RT) psychometric test time correlations for four RT…

This article considers a set of assumptions about the antecedents and consequences of effort expenditure when a subject is engaged in achievement-oriented behavior. It examines both static models (level of effort is constant over trials) and dynamic models (preceding task outcome may influence current level of effort). (Author/BW)

Equally divided by sex and distributed equally across fourth/fifth, eighth/ninth, and college grade levels, 144 subjects performed a mental rotation task under instructions emphasizing either accuracy or speed of response, or both. Instructions had large and consistent effects on speed of response but were not as uniformly effective in their…

Reports the measurement of response latencies and the recording of eye movements in a task in which children of approximately five-and-a-half years counted one to eight dots presented in different configurations. (Author/RH)

Examined the category structure of joy and shame emotions by having college students (N=40) judge slides of human faces. Results supported the family resemblance-prototype process in that the higher the typicality, the shorter the reaction time and showed that the more intense (typical) expressions were recognized more accurately. (LLL)

Attempts to isolate lexical access latencies by measuring word-naming times in two conditions: (1) words were preidentified and had only to be pronounced on signal; (2) words had to be both identified and pronounced. Results strengthen the conclusion that vocal programing is exempt from the age declines seen in other sensory-motor tracts.…

Discusses two experiments into a subject's "Different" reaction time in judging whether two test instances are members of the same semantic category. (Author/RM)