Two 4-year-old children were shown the use of an apparatus whereby they could obtain toys and candy by making certain responses. The apparatus was a matching-to-sample device on which were arranged five response buttons in a circle and one in the middle. Each response button had a display window for the stimulus. Four of the five windows on the…

Forty infants, 10 at 4, 6, 8, and 10 months, were confronted by an experimenter who acted out angry, happy, sad, and neutral facial experssions, accompanied with appropriate vocalizations. The infants' responses were recorded on video tape and rated for attention, negative and positive affect, and activity. Results indicate that the 4-month old…

This study uses a habituation paradigm to systematically investigate the discrepancy hypothesis with male and female new borns. In addition, multiple visual response measures are used in monitoring the habituation process and the infant's response to various degrees of novelty. Ss were 36 apparently normal newborns (half of each sex) ranging in…

The efficacy of gating in the processing of simple, multidimensional stimuli was investigated. In Experiment 1, a continuous classification task was used, with subjects sorting cards according to binary dimensions of line orientation and location. Results suggested that orientation and location are integral dimensions, facilitation occurring with…

Fourteen severely multiply handicapped children with rubella syndrome, six to 16 years of age, were examined with the PLAYTEST system, an operant test procedure using sound and light as stimuli and reinforcers. (Author/MC)

The holistic-discriminability model of object-space perception recognizes various classes of stimuli having different task requirements, with few assumptions. The alternative analytic model, contrary to Dykes and Cooper, is inadequate; it involves many assumptions, predicts only a limited set of data and makes some incorrect predictions.…

Preschoolers learned colors more rapidly than sizes and forms when cup stimuli were used. They learned sizes and forms more rapidly than colors when face stimuli were used. (RL)

This study examined infants' enumeration of puppet jumping tasks. In Experiment 1, 5-7-month-old infants were familiarized to a puppet jumping two or three times, and tested with both numbers of jumps. Infants looked significantly longer at the new number, replicating Wynn [Psychol. Sci. 7 (1996) 164]. To probe further the stability of infants'…

Changes in the perception of figural aftereffects occurring during adulthood were investigated with 56 female subjects. A significant linear trend analysis indicated that the magnitude of the figural aftereffects increased very slightly with age. This was supported by a significant T value which suggested a difference between the two extreme age…

Investigators in this study looked for conditions that can rapidly establish continuous stimulus control of continuous response variations, or "response mapping." Unlike previous research in stimulus control, where a single stimulus comes to control a single response, 36 5-year-old children received errorless discrimination training at…

This study investigates the hypotheses set forth by Russian researchers that there may be identified a pervasive characteristic of the central nervous system labeled as "strength". Ten of the 12 measures used were direct replications of representative strength measures derived from the Russian work. Two additional measures were included to test…

Human recognition behavior is influenced by the phenomenon of shape constancy, which occurs when the shape of an object is correctly perceived regardless of the orientation of the object in space. The research reported here tests the validity of the shape-slant invariance hypothesis, a theoretical formulation of the phenomenon of shape constancy.…

Testing Pollack's hypothesis that decreases in effective contour contrast (resulting from a decrease in receptor sensitivity with age or from a change in actual stimulus contrast) lead to decreases in illusion magnitude. Conclusions are questioned by Sjostrom and Pollack (PS 501 740). (Author/MB)