Early and intensive behavioral intervention (EIBI) is an approach to treating the behavioral deficits and excesses observed in children with autism spectrum disorders. The magnitude of improvement in the overall functioning of children receiving EIBI has stimulated additional research and widespread clinical dissemination through the publication…

The results of the experiment demonstrated that Down's syndrome children are equal to non-disabled children matched on mental age, in their ability to discriminate between colors. Both Down's syndrome and non-disabled children made errors of the same kind. Other undifferentiated mentally handicapped children are less consistent in their color…

Two experiments are reported that reveal the sources of the developmental difference reported by Crane and Ross that second graders learned more than sixth graders about attributes made relevant after solution of a discrimination task. Experiments use technique whereby children verbalize their hypotheses during solution of a discrimination…

Previous research has demonstrated that requiring children to trace from memory the correct member of a pictorial discrimination pair markedly facilitates performance. The subjects for the first experiment in this study were 45 fifth grade students. The control group was given regular discrimination learning instructions. The image-trace group was…

Four hundred children ages 5, 9, and 12 were given a component selection task with stimuli differing in color and shape. Results indicate a greater tendency for older than younger children to withdraw attention from a normally dominant component when advantageous to adopt another feature as the primary functional cue. (Author/SB)

A four-step instructional procedure to assist the learning disabled child to distinguish the distinctive features of letters is described. The procedure involves distinguishing the lower case "b" via a fading out technique from its upper case counterpart "B." The letter directionality can be cued so that the "b-d" distinction is readily apparent.…

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…

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)

This study examined the effects of sentence length and correct syntax on sentence imitation in 54 first-, second-, and fifth-grade elementary school children. The same children were asked to perform an additional discrimination task between normal and scrambled sentences. (Author/CS)

Preoperational and concrete operational kindergarten children received stimulus differentiation training, either with or without feedback, and then a series of discrimination learning problems in which a blank trial probe was used to detect a child's hypothesis after each feedback trial. Piagetian stage theory requires elaboration to account…

The researchers explored factors related to negativism in 27 elementary age autistic children, where negativism was defined as the consistent avoidance of a correct response in a multiple choice discrimination task. (Author)

Experiments showed that in verbal discrimination learning imaging the referent of the correct item was more facilitative than vocalizing the correct item, as long as the imagery structure was executed in the company of relevant motor activity. No difference between the two strategies was found in pictorial discrimination learning. (Author/BJG)