This study was designed to determine if the failure of previous investigations to find habituation and response to novelty in infants younger than 2 months of age was because the stimuli used were too complex or because a constant number of trials rather than an individual criterion of habituation was used. A total of 24 infants between 5 and 6…

The purpose of the present study was to empirically investigate the stability and accuracy of one suggested method for matching test difficulty to examinee ability level. Students' answers to traditional classroom tests were rescored by computer as if the examinations had been flexilevel tests. The scores thus obtained were found to correlate…

An evaluation was made of the methodology and findings presented in "Television and Antisocial Behavior. Field Experiments," by Stanley Milgram and R. Lance Shotland (New York: Academic Press, 1973). In the book, seven experiments were reported, all concerned with antisocial behavior toward a medical charity. Three episodes of Medical…

The concept of alienation is discussed as an internalized state reacting to prevailing social conditions, and political behavior is hypothesized as being its outward manifestation. Purposes of this paper are threefold: (1) produce a new set of data to be used in exploring possible linkages between alienation and political behavior, (2)…

This paper presents a means of evaluating answers to comprehension questions by analyzing the oral language used in the answers to the questions according to the average number of words per communication unit, a measure of linguistic and cognitive growth, in order to determine the effectiveness of comprehension questions asked at two cognitive…

It has been demonstrated that corrected-for-guessing scores will be superior to number-right scores in providing estimates of examinee standing on the trait measured by a multiple-choice test, if it can be assumed that examinees can and will comply with the appropriate directions. The purpose of the present study was to test the validity of that…

In order to understand the communicative interaction of film, it is necessary to carefully analyze the special qualities of film as a visual medium, to understand the elements of audience identification with what happens in the film, and to interpret the use of symbolism that enables an audience to derive meaning from it. Among the special…

Children with histories of high and low exposure to television (and the violence therein) were exposed to a moderately violent film. Measures of autonomic response (skin conductance and blood volume pulse amplitude) were taken before and during their exposure to the violent film. Over both measures and in another replicated study, the high TV…

Infants raised the pitch of their vocalizations when stimulated by vocalizing parents. Nonvocal stimulation did not repeat the effect. Intonation contours did not change during different conditions. The pitch of the parents' vocalizations also rose during vocal interaction. Changes in infant pitch were interpreted as a function of imitation.…

To define factors associated with administrative policy and staff orientation and to examine ward responses and reactions to these factors, data were gathered by several techniques from wards and staff in two selected study camps. Although wide variations in staff orientation and administrative policy characterized the camps, no significant…

Children living in the deprived environment of Appalachia were studied to determine if they showed a limited verbal response to stimuli in their environment, and if their emotional characteristics differed from those of advantaged children. An earlier study (1957) of American Indian children living on a reservation provided the stimulus for this…

Sixty-three children ranging in age from three to nine years made age judgments on drawings of human figures. The stimuli consisted of four different male figures drawn according to typical physical characteristics of the middle-aged adult, adolescent, child, and infant. The figures were reproduced in two sizes and were presented to the subjects…

Heart rate change was used as the index of the orienting response (OR) of 102 kindergarten children. Heart rate change was measured by recording heart rate upon the presentation of tones. 15 similar tones followed by a different, 16th tone, were used. From this data the children were divided into high, medium, or low orientors. Following the…

This paper reports research studies on the determinants of children's helping of another child in distress. Effects of age and various environmental conditions were investigated. Experiments had a similar design: subjects were given a task and made aware that a child was alone in an adjoining room. The experimenter then left the room and subjects…

The learning effects of display motion in procedural learning tasks were examined in two studies. In the first study, two videotapes with identical sound tracks were constructed--one using the recorded television camera motion, the other substituting a parallel series of still camera shots. The results showed a superiority of the motion condition.…