To study improvement of visual monitoring of retardates, specialized training methods backed up by incentives were used. The extent to which these training techniques might be expected to produce results which would generalize was explored. Subjects were eight female mental retardates (ages 15-22) with IQs from 38 to 69. (Author/SJL)

Analyzes the overgeneralizations of bilingual children to determine whether the overgeneralizations of Spanish and English monolinguals would differ from those found in the speech samples of Spanish-English bilinguals and to reach a better understanding of speakers' preference for certain affixes and roots. (MES)

Investigated was student inability to understand mathematics across concepts, focusing on the processes by which students solve problems. In-depth clinical interviews were used with students during ninth-grade general mathematics. Mathematical abilities investigated were information gathering, generalization, reversibility, flexibility, and…

Two implications of best-example theory for category acquisition were tested using a set of artificial concrete object categories. Categories acquired from initial exposure to good exemplars were learned more easily and accurately. People learn the best exemplars are category members before learning the poor exemplars are category members.…

Three task context factors that form obstacles to generalizing logical reasoning strategies for adolescents are discussed. The relationship between these obstacle factors and Piagetian theory is explored. Findings suggest that it is possible to make some predictions about how and when logical mechanisms will be generalized to new situations.…

The ability of 47 EMR (educable mentally retarded) and 51 nonretarded children (ages 8 to 15) to maintain and generalize a sorting and retrieval strategy designed to facilitate recall and clustering was examined. Neither the far generalization data nor the near generalization data revealed any significant results. (Author)

Six mildly mentally retarded adults (ages 21 to 39), equally divided into two treatment groups, were provided with individualized social skills training programs. Results indicated that treatment was effective for virtually all behaviors across all Ss, improvements occurred for both training and generalization scenes, and behavioral performance…

Three experiments were conducted to examine whether infants can detect the color of stationary and moving objects and maintain this discrimination over change in velocity. Subjects were 80 infants ages 8 to 20 weeks. (MP)

A potential cause for children's failure to transfer learning strategies was explored. Subjects were 68 first, third, and fifth graders. (MP)

Male and female college students experienced either partial reinforcement (persistence training) or continuous reinforcement on either of two instrumental tasks as therapy for failure-induced depression and subsequently were exposed to protracted failure (extinction). Durable and partly generalizable persistence training effects were shown.…

Groups of formally educated and of uneducated rural Kpelle tribesman and children were given conceptual learning problems. The finding that education proved to have no significant effect on rule learning for either a conjunctive or a disjunctive rule is interpreted as indicating that formal education exerts its influence primarily on the way in…

This study evaluated a treatment package to improve on-task academic skills by three children with autism. Program components included delayed reinforcement for on-task and on-schedule responding, fading of instructional prompts and instructor's presence, unpredictable supervision, and response cost for off-task responding. On-task and on-schedule…

Three elementary students with mental retardation used a computer-based instructional package to practice purchasing skills and the dollar plus strategy. The instructional package utilized video footage and a constant time delay procedure to facilitate skill acquisition. Skills did not generalize, although changes in purchasing behavior in the…

Three low-achieving third-grade children were exposed to "report-do-report" correspondence training as a reinforcement program to improve academic performance. Intervention involved teaching the children to prompt praise following completing math work, in both training and classroom settings. Students also reported planned behaviors in their…

When taught to link sorting to self-instruction ("I'm looking for blue triangles") children show perfect accuracy in sorting. This study investigated if this performance would generalize to new stimuli. One participant showed near-perfect generalization to all new stimulus sets (shapes, letters, pictures); two had difficulty with…