Two important components of skill learning are the learning process itself (motor acquisition) and the ability to transfer what has been learned to new task variants (motor transfer). Many studies have documented age-related declines in the ability to learn new manual motor skills. In this study, I tested whether the degree of savings at transfer…

The primary purpose of the present study was to determine whether recent findings documenting the benefits of text-related motor activity on young children's memory for reading passages [Glenberg, A. M., Gutierrez, T., Levin, J. R., Japuntich, S., & Kaschak, M. (2004). Activity and imagined activity can enhance young readers' reading…

This study investigated the role that visual tracking plays in coupling rhythmic limb movements to an environmental rhythm. Two experiments were conducted in which participants swung a hand-held pendulum while tracking an oscillating stimulus or while keeping their eyes fixed on a stationary location directly above an oscillating stimulus. It…

Historically, sensory systems have been largely ignored as potential loci of information storage in the neurobiology of learning and memory. They continued to be relegated to the role of "sensory analyzers" despite consistent findings of associatively induced enhancement of responses in primary sensory cortices to behaviorally important signal…

This study investigated the static balance performance of 20 nonhandicapped and 20 learning disabled male children in Texas by comparing mean distances of center of pressure displacement as measured by a forceplate. Specifically, mean displacements in the medial-lateral plane during five static balance tests were measured from a neutral starting…

Conservation of weight is known to be achieved at a conceptual level at about 9 years of age. Infant behavior seems to indicate that between 6 and 18 months of age they develop a sensorimotor form of conservation. (Author/RC)

This study was designed to discover whether a student learns to imitate the skills demonstrated in a motion picture more accurately when the supportive descriptive terminology is presented in an auditory (spoken) form or in a visual (captions) form. A six-minute color 16mm film was produced--"Determining the Test Weight per Bushel of Yellow Corn".…

An experiment apparatus tested two hypotheses: a) supplementary feedback aids learning when it provides information by which to distinguish long target contacts from short ones; b) supplementary feedback, especially if immediate, facilitates performance by providing secondary reinforcement. Five groups, of 20 subjects each, were given 60 trials,…

The article presents techniques for teaching gifted children with the clumsy child syndrome. (Author/SBH)

Examined eight-month-olds' ability to remember the location of a hidden object, using a nonsearch task. Results suggested that the infants remembered the object's location, and were surprised when it had been moved. (SKC)

Outlines the importance of motor and perceptual learning in the educational process; criticizes the de Hirsch, Jansky, Langford technique for identifying potential reading failures; and presents a diagnostic procedure for determining children with motor-perceptual handicaps. Bibliography. (MB)

Piaget's theory of stages of sensorimotor development is supported in cross-sectional and longitudinal validation employing Guttman's scalogram analysis. (MH)