Differential observing responses (DORs) are additional response requirements used to promote orientation to a stimulus in a discrimination task. Farber and Dickson (2023) recently provided a DOR taxonomy, and these authors reported that no prior research has compared the effects of distinct DOR requirements. We compared the effects of two DOR…

It is common to see mirror errors in letters in early stages of reading due to the mirror-generalization process that allows a visual stimulus to be identified independently of its orientation. To avoid such errors, this process must be inhibited. A special case would be children with dyslexia since their difficulties with the alphabetic code may…

This study consisted of two experiments. In the first experiment, 40 college students gave frequency ratings for concrete and abstract words which were equated on normative frequency. From the results it was concluded that abstract (low imagery) words, even though the two sets of words are of equal frequency. In the second experiment, different…

This study was designed to determine whether subjects who received one of three treatments of color cues in an instructional program differed significantly on three learning tasks. Subjects were randomly selected from the kindergarten populations of two Michigan public schools and were assigned to one of three treatment groups. Eight letter-like…

This book is an introduction to the psychological study of basic learning processes in children. Written for students who are not majors in psychology and who do not have much familiarity with the technical vocabulary of psychology, it has two themes: even the most basic kinds of learning are included by cognitive processes or mental activities;…

A well established finding in the discrimination learning literature is that pictures are learned more rapidly than their associated verbal labels. It was hypothesized in this study that the usual superiority of pictures over words in a discrimination list containing same-instance repetitions would disappear in a discrimination list containing…

This experiment was a direct test of the hypothesis that picture-word differences in discrimination learning are a function of apparent frequency differences associated with two types of material. The subjects consisted of 80 sixth graders randomly selected from two elementary schools located in middle-class neighborhoods. Each subject was tested…

The relationship between color cues, figure form, and size discrimination was investigated. Subjects were 28 kindergarten students selected at random from a lower socioeconomic elementary school and 28 grade-3 students from the same school. From a higher socioeconomic area school, 28 grade-3 students were selected. In addition, 12 slow readers in…

The incidental learning effects of discrimination which would be required in searching for and selecting related information in a text were explored. Sixty-one students from three educational psychology classes at Fairleigh-Dickinson University participated. Subjects were randomly assigned to four experimental groups and were given reading search…

Reversals in poor and normal second-grade readers were studied in relation to their whole phonological error pattern in reading real words and nonsense syllables. Error categories included sequence and orientation reversals, other consonants, vowels, and total error. Reversals occurred in quantity only in poor readers, with large individual…