Stimulus over-selectivity is a phenomenon often displayed by individuals with many forms of developmental and intellectual disabilities, and also by individuals lacking such disabilities who are under cognitive strain. It occurs when only one of potentially many aspects of the environment controls behavior. Adult participants were trained and…

Restricted stimulus control refers to discrimination learning with atypical limitations in the range of controlling stimuli or stimulus features. In the study reported here, 4 normally capable individuals and 10 individuals with intellectual disabilities (ID) performed two-sample delayed matching to sample. Sample-stimulus observing was recorded…

The learning of the relations between discriminative stimuli, choice actions, and their outcomes can be characterized as conditional discriminative choice learning. Research shows that the technique of presenting unique outcomes for specific cued choices leads to faster and more accurate learning of such relations and has great potential to be…

Three experiments involving institutionalized mentally retarded persons revealed that the antecedent stimulus manipulation (i.e., hiding the candy or the kitty) was critical to establishing correct performance, while manipulation of the consequent stimuli afffected performance slightly. Findings had implications for reinforcement conditions. (CL)

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.…

The stimulus summation hypothesis predicts that the response strength of individual stimuli, when placed in combination, algebraically summate to produce a greater response strength than that of individual stimuli. (Author)

The investigation of interactions between the abilities of stimulus discrimination and simple learning and two instructional variables (discrimination difficulty and degree of overlearning) with 27 mentally retarded adolescents found an interaction between stimulus discrimination and the number of words presented at one time for learning…

Five preschool children at risk for mental retardation were taught to choose an odd stimulus which varied in one important dimension (e.g., form, color, or size) from other stimuli in a set. Oddity responding was shown to transfer across stimulus types, and learning was maintained for a minimum of six weeks. (Author/JW)

Because disabled learners may profit from procedures using gradual stimulus change, this study utilized a microcomputer to investigate the effectiveness of stimulus equalization, an error reduction procedure involving an abrupt but temporary reduction of dimensional complexity. The procedure was found to be generally effective and implications for…

Two time-delay conditions for teaching complex visual discriminations to 14 normal preschoolers, 12 with mild mental retardation, and 11 with moderate mental retardation were compared. Results indicated that for all populations and stimuli, time delay of multiple dynamic distinctive-feature prompts produced learning, while time delay of the single…

Recognition scores of 12 moderately and mildly retarded children (mean ages 13 and 14 years) for positive and negative discriminative stimuli were tested after a single trial through a discrimination problem list. (Author/CL)

This study examined the matching and sequencing of quantities, numerals, and arbitrary forms by two individuals with mental retardation. Results showed that sequence training did not readily lead to new matching performances, unlike prior research with college students. Instead, training in matching to sample yielded emergent sequence production…

Children with mental retardation are particularly prone to failure on relational tasks such as oddity and match-to-sample, suggesting a differential sensitivity to relational information. This paper reports on several studies in which characteristics of stimulus arrays were enhanced. Results demonstrated the theoretical and practical significance…