This review of Bever's psycholinguistics survey is for the most part favorable. Commentary is centered on sections 1, 2, 4, and 6 of the report. The survey's first part is judged significant in that Wundt's pioneering work in psycholinguistics is discussed. The second section, on grammar as a psychological process, is found obscure in its…

Preschool readiness measures were secured on 35 pairs of disadvantaged 2- to 3-year-old lower SES black children, representing large and small families, to determine the impact of family size on readiness profiles. The findings reveal that blacks from small families achieved significantly higher scores on 3 of the 9 skill areas: Visual Memory,…

This study begins a systematic examination of the role that content of materials used in experimental free recall tasks, as well as the origin plus the appropriateness of designated "conceptual categories," play in determining mnemonic performance of different groups. It will deliberately engineer the way materials are derived and…

Visual and auditory stimuli were presented to children to measure symbol processing abilities. Slides which required matching the similarities in two objects in a group of three were presented. At times the matching criteria varied between function, color, and form. Reaction time was quicker when matching by color than by function, which was…

A skilled cognitive theorist might help behaviorists resolve inconsistencies found from their experimentation with imaginal mnemonics in paired-associate and serial learning tasks. Iconic cognition which relegates verbal processes to short-term storage and output systems is inadequate to explain the verbal coding and elaboration processes…

Fifth-grade and college students in two experiments listened to tape-recorded sentences and completed tests of immediate recall. The first experiment investigated the effect of a listener's expectations upon his understanding of a sentence. Sometimes the "most probable" answer was not congruent with the "correct" answer, suggesting that the…

Intended for parents, the handbook describes characteristics of learning disabled (LD) children and offers activities that the child can perform in the home to build skill proficiency. It is explained that the activities are designed to relieve the parent and child of constant awareness of the disability, to avoid use of special materials and…

The results of a number of experiments with the memorizing of several different subject-matters are presented in such a way that the relationship between number of opportunities for error (word elements faded) and number of errors actually made can be observed for individuals and groups. The particular selection of word elements to be taught by…

Two studies were conducted with English speakers to investigate (1) the facilitative effects of melodic features of speech, and (2) whether poor readers (without evidence of sensory defect) show a greater impairment than good readers when melodic features are made unavailable in the speech input. It was hypothesized that when melodic cues are not…

A method for assessing the structure of organization was developed on the basis of the ordinal separation, or proximity, between pairs ot items in recall protocols over a series of trials. The proximity measure is based on the assumption, common to all indices of organization, that items which are coded together in subjective memory units will…

The performance of 144 pairs of college students on four successive concept attainment problems was assessed. A 3 x 2 x 2 x 4 factorial design with repeated measures on the last factor was used with the following variables: (a) type of interaction format (cooperation with discussion allowed during solution of the problems, cooperation with…

Analyzes characteristics of Spanish language news broadcasts and discusses their peculiarities and discourse structure. A newscast that can be used in the classroom to improve students' listening comprehension is also outlined. (LMO)

More than 1,500 high school foreign language students were tested for comprehension of authentic texts. First- through fifth-year French, German, and Spanish students read texts of the types mentioned in the ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines at the intermediate and intermediate high levels. All students captured some meaning from each of the texts.…

Effective intervention strategies for learning disabled students should recognize such cognitive deficiencies as weaknesses in attention, memory deficits, and problems in generalizing and abstracting information. Approaches which emphasize enhanced learning processes include: self-monitoring; repetition and deliberate instruction in control…

Reviews the neural modeling principles of learning, perception, cognition, and motor control, discusses their applications to sensory-motor problem solving, and explores possible relationships between that pattern of problem solving and aspects of higher order formal operational problem solving. Cites implications for science education. (ML)