This paper is concerned with the unfolding of human marks, beginning with scribbling, and their contribution to developing literacy. The paper argues that children's scribbles reveal a neural substrate destined for marks and influence that substrate significantly, cuing what is distinctly human in linguistic behavior and consciousness, or symbolic…

The results suggest that through meditation practice the individual may learn how to concentrate and to volitionally alter his feeling state by shifting his attention. (Author)

The author indicates a number of methodological differences between his experiments and the unsuccessful replication by Forster and Grierson. He also suggests that these problems are complicated by an unnecessarily narrow interpretation of the attentional selectivity hypothesis. Forster and Grierson's study and rejoinder appear in this journal…

The development of capacity for attention was assessed by giving children 5, 8, 9, and 12 years of age a component-selection task with instructions to attend to one component or another, or with no specific instructions regarding the stimuli. (CM)

The hypothesis was tested that low self-esteem people are more "self-conscious," which impairs their task performance. High and low self-esteem subjects performed a concept formation task under conditions designed to focus the subject's attention on himself or on the task. Results paralleled findings on test anxiety. (SJL)

Two potential strategies for coping with stress are "situation redefinition" (i.e., reappraising a stressful situation as nonstressful) and "attentional diversion" (i.e., focusing attention on a neutral or pleasant stimulus rather than on a stressful stimulus). Although these strategies have been discussed frequently by personality theorists,…

Examined performance on ventromedial prefrontal tasks of preschoolers with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), preschoolers with developmental delays, and typically- developing 12- to 46-month-olds, matched on mental age. Found that children with ASD performed similarly to comparison groups on all executive function tasks. Ventromedial, but not…

Abilities of individuals (n=42), either with or without mental retardation, to search for and detect changes to naturalistic scenes were investigated. Individuals with mental retardation required more time to detect changes, especially changes of marginal interest. Eye-tracking analysis of six participants suggested that individuals with mental…

One longitudinal and one cross-sectional study evaluated the interactive effects of endogenous and exogenous influences on infants' attention allocation by assessing the role of target familiarity on distraction latency during object exploration. Findings indicated that 9- and 10-month-olds, but not 6.5-month- olds, exhibited longer latencies as…

This article addresses educational challenges for children with severe to profound hearing loss who receive cochlear implants. Despite the implants, these children face acoustic challenges, academic challenges, attention challenges, associative challenges, and adjustment challenges. (Contains references.) (Author/DB)

A short-term cognitive mediation training intervention program designed to alter the social-cognitive basis for aggressive behavior of adolescent aggression offenders was found to increase social problem-solving skills, reduce endorsement of beliefs supporting aggression, and reduce aggressive, impulsive, and inflexible behavior. (RH)

The study examined the developmental lag hypothesis for learning disabilities by evaluating dichotic listening ability using both free recall and directed attention conditions in 24 learning disabled (LD) adults. Findings indicated LD adults showed similar deficits in lateralized selective auditory linguistic processing as children with LD. (DB)

Examined age-related changes in visual selective attention--ability to resist interference--in children 5 to 12 years old and adults. The interference effect on stimulus evaluation did not discriminate between age groups; however, the interference effect on correct response activation showed a pronounced age-related reduction, suggesting a…

This study used saccadic eye movements to assess visuospatial attention in 53 normal children (ages 8-15). Saccadic latency, the ability to suppress extraneous saccades during fixation, and the ability to inhibit task-provoked anticipatory saccades all improved with age. Developmental patterns varied by task. Analyses of age-related changes may be…