Three experiments examined whether the phenomena of visual search for single characters (Sternberg, 1966) generalizes to word and word-category search when target and distractor sets had varied and consistent mappings across trials. Previous results were replicated. Four principles of search are discussed within a theory of automatic/control…

The effect of uncertainty of movement increased reaction time and movement time significantly in a simple task of running for mildly retarded eight- and ten-year old children. No change in performance was noted for normal children. (Author/PN)

This study extended the exploration of the development of word identification speed to younger skilled and less skilled readers. It focused on the attainment of unitized speeds to determine when the final phase in reading development (the speed of processing) is reached for familiar words during the early years. (Author/PN)

The Matching Familiar Figures Test assesses the dimension of reflection-impulsivity in children. This study compares responses of a single sample to the established norms and adds intelligence quotient (IQ) for classification purposes. Analysis indicates that IQ significantly correlates with both latency and errors. (Author/CM)

Down's syndrome, normal, and mentally retarded children performed continuous tracking and drawing tasks. Normal children performed the main tracking task better and were better on all temporal components than were the other groups. No differences separated groups on spatial aspects. Down's syndrome children performed more poorly than retarded…

Examined whether children (ages 4-5) were, like adults, capable of using precued information to preselect a response and remember it briefly. Findings suggest that the 10 preschoolers could preselect a response and maintain it for about one second, but they had difficulty over a 3- or 5-second delay. (Author/SJL)

Two experiments indicated that sentence verification times were significantly longer when a discrepancy between target sentence and context was in the syntactic presupposition, rather than in the assertion. Findings are best explained by a structural hypothesis, not by strategies designed to locate given and new information. (Author/CP)

A sample of the literature on test speededness is reviewed; methods of assessing speededness are presented and criticized; the assumptions that underlie these methods are questioned, and alternate, multiple-administration methods are suggested. The importance of the effect of time limits is discussed. (Author/CTM)

In these choice response keyboard tasks, older subjects detected and corrected their errors as efficiently as the young. Reaction time (RT) for error and error correction responses remained relatively constant with increasing age while RTs for correct responses and other, arbitrary, error-signaling responses markedly increased. (Author/SJL)

A study investigated the recall of terminal location and distance of both preselected and constrained movements. Systematic alteration of the magnitude and direction of the starting position for recall movements revealed that the distance moved significantly interfered with the recall of the terminal location, but that distance was usually…

Describes three experiments designed to determine whether grapheme-to-phoneme rules are automatically applied when a word pattern is encoded. Concludes that grapheme-to-phoneme translation is a natural response to written words, at least when naming is required, and that mediation by visual mechanisms can be ruled out. (Author/MES)