Children's imitation of a model's sentence structure, word content and use of present, imperfect or future tense verbs was studied in third and fourth graders. (Authors)

Three studies are reported which investigated the role of four variables in semantic generalization: Intentional versus Incidental learning instructions, associative and semantic relationships of the generalization stimuli (GSs) to the critical stimuli (CrSs), and rate of CrS presentation. (Author)

Kindergarten and first grade children were trained to choose the middle-sized stimulus in either a single stimulus set or in each of two nonoverlapping stimulus sets. Findings were reported in terms of the assumption that cognitive processes are important in the intermediate-sized transposition paradigm. (Author/DB)

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of using picture activity schedule books to increase on-schedule and on-task behaviors of children with moderate intellectual disabilities. Four students enrolled in a self-contained classroom participated in the study. Graduated guidance, system of least prompts, and verbal prompting…

We studied economic choice behavior in capuchin monkeys by offering them to choose between two different foods available in variable amounts. When monkeys selected between familiar foods, their choice patterns were well-described in terms of relative value of the two foods. A leading view in economics and biology is that such behavior results from…

This theoretical paper is concerned with the evaluation and preference responses of preschool children to light- and dark-skinned human figures. The paper examines the hypothesis that in children the frequently observed bias favoring light-skinned persons over dark-skinned persons is not a racial bias but is related to early learning experiences…

Curriculum development would be greatly aided if it could be demonstrated that certain instructional techniques have a generalization effect that encompasses several content settings. The evidence that transfer does occur within the learning process is strong enough to warrant this study into the generalization of science instruction. It was…

Six studies relevant to the analysis of generalized imitative behavior are described. The first examined the role of verbal instructions in generalized imitation by comparing the use of a "do this" instruction with no such instruction and the use of positive reinforcement with no reinforcement. The tenacity of generalized imitation in this study…

Two experiments were done with a 16-year-old severely retarded male, involving the training of generalized instruction-following responses to preposition-noun combinations. (Author/DLS)

Two autistic boys, ages 6 and 10 years, whose imitative responding was functionally inaccurate and whose performance generalized poorly, were trained to imitate accurately using a reinforcement-extinction strategy. (DLS)

To explore training with multiple exemplars, six severely retarded students (ages 5-21) were taught signed labels for categories of natural objects using either three or five good examples. The arithmetic difference between the two conditions indicated higher levels of generalization following training with five examples for five of the six…

The high degree of predictability of Finnish orthography is reflected in a uniformly high ability of school children by the end of the first grade to pronounce unfamiliar words from their spellings. (Author)

To the authors' knowledge, this is the first conclusive demonstration that an observer's spontaneous verbalizations can interfere with vicarious rule learning. (Authors)

Alternative analysis to study reported in PS 502 061. Rejoinder presented in PS 502 063. (MB)