This study analyzes infant distress (fussing and crying) and the resulting responses of caregivers in an infant day care nursery. Six babies (mean age 4.8 months when the study began) and their caregivers were observed in seven sequences of observations over a total span of 10 months. Each sequence of observations took place on six days during a…

Three elements to be considered in computer-assisted language instruction courseware design are: (1) environment; (2) visuals; and (3) timing. Computer-generated environments must be dynamic, flexible, challenging, and engaging. Visuals must be easily readable, uncluttered, consistently laid out. Program time should be balanced with real time.…

Examines interactions between timing accuracy and muscular parameters in children aged five who performed a visuomotor game. Five images were successively presented on a television display at precisely timed intervals for a total period of 11 seconds. Results suggest that timing accuracy is dependent on action-produced sensory cues. (RWB)

Studies analyzing children's response time to detect word targets revealed that six-year-olds and younger children generally did not show the response time advantage for accented target words which adult listeners show, providing support for the argument that the processing advantage for accented words reflects the semantic role of accent as an…

Investigates the retrieval of words from lexical memory in kindergartners, first graders, third graders, and adults. A lexical decision task with auditorily presented words and nonwords was used, with decision latency as the dependent variable. Results were considered in relation to a model of the lexicon in children and adults. (Author/CI)

A correlation exists between verbal ability test scores and name identity minus physical identity reaction times in a letter matching task. The present results support Carroll's (1981) suggestion that the reaction time difference is related more to speed than power component of standardized tests and is not optimum for prediction. (Author/RD)

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between working memory and text coherence in Chinese text comprehension. Eighty-six subjects were asked to complete an operation-character working memory span task to classify them into low-span and high-span and a reading task to measure the time to detect inconsistency as well as their…

Two groups of undergraduates differing in reading ability were tested on a number of reaction-time tasks designed to determine the speed of encoding visual information at several different levels, tests of sensory functions, verbal and quantitative reasoning ability, short-term auditory memory span, and ability to comprehend spoken text.…

Three experiments focused on the function relating children's response time to adults' response time in corresponding conditions. In all experiments, children's response times increased in a linear manner as a function of adults' response times. (BB)

Eye-movement registration was used to examine the influence of the semantic complexity of addition and subtraction word problems on response time and eye-fixation patterns of 10 high-ability and 10 low-ability second graders. Data provide evidence of the crucial role of semantic factors in word problem solving. (SLD)

Two studies with 658 white and 353 African-American elementary school children performing reaction time tasks are offered in support of Spearman's hypothesis about the relative size of the mean African-American-white differences on mental tests as a function of the tests' loadings on psychometric "g." (SLD)

Two cohorts of preschool children (n=238) were followed to determine whether tests of phonological awareness, orthographic processing, and serial-naming speed, added to a preschool battery, would improve prediction of reading. The major predictors of first-grade reading and spelling were preschool letter-naming and sentence memory for both…

Three experiments investigated whether theory-of-mind deficits and weak central coherence might be functionally related. Found that theory-of-mind performance was inversely related to a measure of central coherence bias in the general population. Poor theory-of-mind performance was linked to weak central coherence among children with typical…

This study aimed at investigating whether one of the key deficits in Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), slow response inhibition, predicted the response to methylphenidate (MPH) treatment. In order to address this issue, we used Stop Signal Reaction Times (SSRTs) measured at baseline in 20 medication-naive boys with ADHD as…

Two experiments investigated whether young and old adults can temporarily remove information from a capacity-limited central component of working memory (WM) into another component, the activated part of long-term memory (LTM). Experiment 1 used a modified Sternberg recognition task (S. Sternberg, 1969); Experiment 2 used an arithmetic…