Global-local processing was examined in high-functioning children with autism and in groups of typically developing children. In experiment 1, the effects of structural bias were tested by comparing visual search that favored access to either local or global targets. The children with autism were not unusually sensitive to either level of visual…

This report describes a program designed to increase students' on-task behavior. The students in the sample population consisted of kindergarten, first, and fifth graders. These classrooms are located in a community in northern Illinois. The problem of student behavior adversely affecting on-task behavior was well documented through a review of…

This paper presents an intervention model for working with children having attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The model provides a methodological approach to treating ADHD through assessing the distractibility level of the child and using interventions in a systematic manner to enhance task completion. Preliminary information lists…

A study was conducted to investigate further the dichotic outcomes in right-handers as a function of sex, ear-side, and most especially stronger attentional bias. The derived prediction was: that increased focus time on the right side would produce a striking right ear advantage (REA) in either right-handed men or women, replicating the most…

This study used cued dichotic listening to investigate differences in language lateralization among right-handed (control), left handed, bilingual, and learning disabled children. Subjects (N=60) ranging in age from 7-13 years were administered a consonant-vowel-consonant dichotic paradigm with three experimental conditions (free recall, directed…

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…