Children and adults were trained and tested on formation of novel simple discriminations and conditional stimulus relations. Subjects who formed these sets were trained and tested on formation of stimulus equivalence classes. A modest majority of children matched directly paired stimuli; a few matched indirectly paired stimuli. All normal adults…

An assessment of identity matching to sample with 2-dimensional forms was conducted with 44 subjects with moderate and severe intellectual disabilities. Overall, generalized identity matching was demonstrated in 34 of 44 subjects, including 7 of 16 individuals with mental age scores below 3.0 years. (Author/DB)

This study with 50 adults with mental retardation, found that performance on the Facial Discrimination Task (Emotional and Age Tasks) was significantly correlated to the Cognitive Assessment System total score. Hierarchical regression analyses produced results suggesting that cognitive processes are involved in processing facial stimuli in a…

Two experiments examined 6-month-olds' ability to discriminate between visual displays of various number of dots varying in size and position, and with controls for other extraneous variables. Findings indicated that infants could discriminate between large sets on the basis of numerosity if they differed by a large ratio (8 versus 16, but not 8…

In Experiment 1, we trained four pigeons to concurrently discriminate displays of 16 same icons (16S) from displays of 16 different icons (16D) as well as between displays of same icons (16S) from displays that contained 15 same icons and one different icon (15S:1D). The birds rapidly learned to discriminate 16S vs. 16D displays, but they failed…

Using a context discrimination procedure and rats as the subjects, the formation of context-dependent aversions to novel and familiar fluids was investigated. Experiment 1 revealed that context dependency could be established to a novel fluid (saccharin) after three cycles of context discrimination training and that the acquired context dependency…

To date, only 1 study has evaluated the impact of a Pavlovian drug conditional stimulus (CS) on operant responding. A within-subject operant 1-lever go/no-go (across sessions) design was used to evaluate the impact of Pavlovian contingencies on the discriminative stimulus effects of nicotine (0.4 mg/kg) and ethanol (800 mg/kg) in male Sprague…

Viewing a threatening stimulus can bias visual attention toward that location. Such effects have typically been investigated only in the visual modality, despite the fact that many threatening stimuli are most dangerous when close to or in contact with the body. Recent multisensory research indicates that a neutral visual stimulus, such as a light…

Subjects' rehearsal strategies in learning a 32-pair mixed list of high- and low-imagery pairs of nouns during the four study trials in an alternating study/test presentation were measured. (Editor)

Conducted two experiments which employed discrimination learning methods to test predictions related to the difficulty of discrimination of lateral reversals and of inversions when shapes are presented: (1) successively, (2) simultaneously in lateral alignment, and (3) simultaneously in vertical alignment. Subjects were 6-year-old children. (SDH)

Subjects of this study were 19- and 23-week-old infants. Results showed that the older infants demonstrated differential attention to novel over familiar stimuli during recognition tests. An examination of their responsiveness during familiarization presentations indicated differing trends of looking activity. (Author/CS)

To determine whether the distraction effect associated with material rewards in discrimination learning can account for the superior performance of reward groups in probability learning, the performance of 144 school children (preschool, second, and fifth grades) on a two-choice successive discrimination task was compared under three reinforcement…