A go/no-go conditioned head-turn paradigm was used to examine the abilities of 6- and 12-month-olds to discriminate changes in temporal grouping and their perception of absolute and relative timing information when listening to patterns of white-noise bursts. (Author/RH)

Examines discrimination of geometric shapes by three-month-old infants who were presented with geometric stimuli moving laterally at two different velocities. Finds that subjects discriminate between geometric forms at velocities that, according to previous findings, might interfere with shape discrimination. Discusses the possible interactive…

Sixteen adolescents with mental retardation and 16 typical adolescents participated in a negative priming procedure in two experiments. Unlike previous studies, this study found that subjects exhibited inhibition under instructions to respond on the basis of stimulus identity in a manner similar to that of individuals without mental retardation.…

Infants (n=34) were tested on a speech-sound discrimination-in-noise task using the visual reinforcement of infant speech discrimination procedure. An adult control group was also tested. The infant-adult difference in discrimination threshold in noise was 6.9 dB. Advantages of this adaptive threshold procedure and possible applications are noted.…

Examined seven-month-old infants' perceptions of happy and fearful facial expressions. Infants could generalize discrimination of expressions across male and female faces if first familiarized with happy faces. Infants tended to look longer at fear faces than at happy faces. Preferential responding was not specific to any individual face.…

Results indicated that in both adults and infants combined cues facilitate discrimination of the phonemic contrast regardless of whether the cues cooperate or conflict. The three experiments did not support a phonetic interpretation of conflicting/cooperating cues for the perception of final stop consonant voicing. (Author/DB)

Comparison of the auditory frequency resolving ability of preschool children, school-aged children, and adults found data from children as young as three-years-old that were qualitatively indistinguishable from adult data though threshold estimates from young children were more variable from run to run than from adults. Increasing age improved…

This study found correlations (.45 to .59) between scores on a battery of auditory discrimination tasks and measures of intelligence and academic aptitude in two samples of college students. An implication is that intelligence is a potential confounding variable in studies of the auditory perceptual abilities of various clinical populations.…

This investigation examined the response strategies and discrimination accuracy of adults and children (aged 5-10) as the ratio of same to different trials was varied across 3 conditions of an auditory discrimination task. All subjects changed response strategies depending on the ratio of same-to-different trials. (DB)

This study investigated the relationship between categorical perception and dyslexia by comparing the discrimination responses of 19 children with dyslexia and 17 average readers to sinewave analogues of speech sounds presented as either nonspeech whistles or as speech sounds. The study found an increased perceptibility of within-category…

When six-month-old infants are preexposed to one stimulus, they are later able to remember that stimulus and distinguish it from a previously unseen, novel stimulus; degree of experience with one stimulus and the magnitude of novelty effect positively covary. Neurological substrates of infants' memory skills are described. (RH)

Investigates preschool children's ability (n = 30) to discriminate age, and subject's use of different facial areas in ranking facial photographs into age order. Results indicate subjects from 3 to 9 years can successfully rank the photos. Compared with other facial features, the eye region was most important for success in the age ranking task.…

An assessment of identity matching to sample with 2-dimensional forms was conducted with 44 subjects with moderate and severe intellectual disabilities. Overall, generalized identity matching was demonstrated in 34 of 44 subjects, including 7 of 16 individuals with mental age scores below 3.0 years. (Author/DB)

This study with 50 adults with mental retardation, found that performance on the Facial Discrimination Task (Emotional and Age Tasks) was significantly correlated to the Cognitive Assessment System total score. Hierarchical regression analyses produced results suggesting that cognitive processes are involved in processing facial stimuli in a…

To determine whether the effects of noncontingent feedback were transferable, 64 first-grade boys first were given a two-choice discrimination task and then a different contingent task. Results suggested that, even when conditions change, experience with prior noncontingent feedback disrupts the ability to use contingent information. (Author/BE)