Individuals of all ages extract structure from the sequences of patterns they encounter in their environment, an ability that is at the very heart of cognition. Exactly what underlies this ability has been the subject of much debate over the years. A novel mechanism, implicit chunk recognition (ICR), is proposed for sequence segmentation and chunk…

Fifty-two institutionalized mentally handicapped children (average CA of 12 years) were engaged in a study attempting to determine whether there are ordinal dependencies in various scales of developmental milestones or supra-structural behaviors in language, and if so, the degree to which hierarchical levels within given categories serve as…

THREE- AND 4-YEAR-OLDS WERE GIVEN VERBAL LEARNING PRETRAINING TO DETERMINE ITS EFFECT UPON THE PERFORMANCE OF REVERSAL AND NONREVERSAL SHIFT DISCRIMINATION TASKS. THE EXPERIMENTAL TASK WAS THE CLASSICAL REVERSAL-NONREVERSAL SHIFT PARADIGM. THE 96 PRE-SCHOOLERS, PRIMARILY FROM THE PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY NURSERY SCHOOL, WERE DIVIDED INTO 4…

Proposed is a model for basic preconditions for "the design of effective programs in developmental learning." Such a program should include (1) a continuous psychocognitive diagnosis and assessment of each child; (2) a structured, coherent, sequential approach to content area; (3) a focus on symbolic manipulation and the essentials of a concept;…