The effectiveness of training procedures which used visual-visual arbitrary matching, blocked-trial matching-to-sample, and successive discrimination training to teach visual-visual discrimination of two-dimensional forms was evaluated with two men having severe mental retardation. Results indicated that the procedures did establish conditional…

States that 46 children aged 12-16 were shown a page of meaningless text covered with plastic overlays, including 7 that were various colors and 1 that was clear. Explains that each child selected the overlay that made reading easiest. Notes that children who read with a colored overlay complained of visual discomfort when they read without the…

Isometric pinch force regulation was investigated in children and adults using a visuo-motor tracking paradigm. Younger children aged 5-7 years performed significantly worse than older children aged 9-11 years and adults in terms of an overall error score as well as a correlation score, which is believed to reflect the ability to predict the…

Noting that children who can easily categorize a picture in terms of what it depicts may have difficulty understanding the picture as a representation or thing in itself, four experiments with children around four years old examined their responses to pictures as things in themselves. Results showed that some children had difficulty understanding…

Evidence that the vigor of the startle reflex varies systematically with the organism's emotional state is reviewed. A theory elucidating this relationship suggests how amplitude of eyeblink response to a probe may be modulated by affective content of perception and thought. Implications for research on emotion are outlined. (SLD)

Results of 6 experiments involving 200 Australian elementary and secondary school students support the hypothesis that negative consequences of the split attention effect in geometry may be ameliorated by presenting geometry statements in auditory rather than visual form. (SLD)

This study examined effects of visual impairment on the performance of typical educational tasks requiring visual accommodation to print material at three different distances. Subjects were 18 visually impaired and 19 nonimpaired children (ages 6-10). Findings indicated that visually impaired children exhibited more fixation shifts per task.…

Examined children's emotional and cognitive responses to emotionally evocative vignettes. Results indicated age-related increases in children's responses. Found limited increases with age in children's concordant emotions, or emotions identical to emotions of persons in the vignettes, and continuous increases with age in children's attributions…

The mental capacity of 120 children aged 10 to 16 years was measured with 2 visual information-processing tasks, and their level of moral development was assessed with the Sociomoral Reflection Measure. Results suggest that mental capacity is a necessary but not sufficient condition for moral developmental growth. (LB)

Children and adults were more likely to claim a word was presented as a picture than vice versa. Results indicated the absence of developmental differences in reality monitoring and similarity in representational processes of children and adults. (BC)

Examined children's monitoring of TV programs for visual content and processing of program content through language. Narration enhanced visual attention and comprehension. Auditory comprehension did not depend on looking. Auditory attention did not differ with the presence or absence of narration. (BC)

Evidence from 5 experiments with over 150 newborns suggests that infants are born with some information about the structure of faces. This information, termed CONSPEC, is contrasted with CONLERN, a device for learning visual characteristics of conspecifics. Distinction between these mechanisms allows for reconciling conflicting data about face…

Fourteen five- and nine-month-old infants were presented with illuminated toys to reach for in total darkness. In half the trials, a luminescent marker was attached to the reaching hand. The nine-month olds reached just as accurately with or without the hand marker, whereas five-month olds were generally inaccurate and unaffected by the marker.…

A study involving elementary school students in three age groups examined two explanations for the finding that young children tend to classify objects according to similarity relations, whereas adults emphasize dimensional structure. Results countered the view that children perceive objects according to a more primitive holistic structure. (RH)

The reliability of visual inspection in single-case research was investigated by determining agreement among 5 judges visually inspecting 44 graphs depicting behavior from baseline to intervention. Agreement between visual inspection and statistical procedures was determined. Implications for single-case research are discussed. (SLD)