In two experiments, we examined the disruptive effects of a "can't answer" response option (CARO) on equivalence formation. The first experiment was a systematic replication of Duarte, Eikeseth, Rosales-Ruiz, and Baer (1998), in which participants in a CARO group and a No-CARO group performed conditional discrimination tasks with…

Two groups of mentally retarded children (MA: 4 to 8 years) were pretrained using two different methods. It was predicted that shift performance of the two groups trained to use different strategies would resemble those of two different developmental levels. (MP)

The effects of rate of stimulus presentation and reinforcement conditions on the two-choice discrimination learning performance of MA matched normal and familial retarded children were examined. (Authors)

Results of two experiments show that only postinformative feedback intervals to be significant sources of variation; mean trends appeared to indicate that extended preresponse intervals interfere with performance, if anything. (Authors/MB)

Investigates to what extent discrimination learning through time delay of multistimulus, distinctive-feature prompts is a function of the inclusion and configuration of the S-prompt. Results of two experiments with children aged four and five indicate that most subjects did not learn the task assigned unless two distinctive-feature prompts were…

This study was designed to assess the relative effectiveness of four components of pretraining on a subsequent simultaneous discrimination and reversal: (1) making same-different judgments about the two stimuli; (2) making a specific observing response to the critical feature of the stimuli; (3) simple familiarization with the stimuli; and (4)…

A correspondence is suggested between the two different abilities underlying performance on intellectual or learning tasks discussed by Jensen and the two response processes postulated by various mediational models of discrimination learning. To test this, two groups of nursery school children differentiated by the measurable social class of their…

Infants in four age groups--three, six, nine and twelve months--were exposed to an experimental procedure designed to assess the extent to which such subjects were capable of discriminating between different orientations of the same form, and the extent to which they were capable of recognizing the identity between different orientations of the…

This is a partial report of a longitudinal investigation designed to assess the psychological effects of an experimentally conducted day care program on children during the first 30 months of life. The experimental subjects were Chinese and Caucasian children from working and middle class families who were cared for at a special group care center…