The current study consisted of 2 parts, with the same 4 normally developing 4-yr-old children employed across both parts. The primary aim of Part 1 was to replicate previous research on exemplar training and its impact upon the emergence of repertoires of derived symmetry or mutually entailed relations. In this part of the study, the children were…

Human adults are more accurate at discriminating faces from their own race than faces from another race. This "other-race effect" (ORE) has been characterized as a reflection of face processing specialization arising from differential experience with own-race faces. We examined whether 3.5-month-old infants exhibit ORE using morphed faces on which…

In this article, the author discusses and presents seven possibilities that describe how symmetry principles are reflected in behavior analysis. First, if there are apparently no functional distinctions to be made between positive and negative reinforcement, then reinforcer effectiveness (by various measures) is invariant under a simple inversion…

Acquisition of verbal behavior is a major goal of interventions for children with developmental disabilities. We evaluated the effectiveness of manipulation of an establishing operation for functional discriminated mands. Four individuals with developmental disabilities participated in a training procedure designed to teach two separate mands for…

Two experiments investigated the role of kindergarten and elementary school children's spontaneous cognitive sets in pictorial discrimination learning. Data indicated that, in comparison to the behavior of older children, the behavior of kindergarteners is governed more by the perceptible than by the conceptual attributes of stimuli. (GO)

This study focused on the influence of gender schemas on children's abilities to focus their attention away from or toward stimuli containing the dimension of gender. Children identified as gender schematic and aschematic participated in a nonreversal discrimination learning paradigm in which one relevant dimension was gender-relevant and another…

Reviews research which demonstrates that responses from different behavior systems to a given stimulus situation may be far from perfectly correlated with each other. Discusses the phylogenetic and ontogenetic development of these systems and the roles of both the species and the individual in bringing the systems into mutual correspondence.…

The stimulus-familiarization-effect (SFE) paradigm, a reaction-time (RT) task based on a response to novelty procedure, was modified to assess response for novelty, ie., a response-reinforcement sequence. The potential implications of attention for reinforcement theory and learning in general are discussed. (Author/CS)

In order to test detection thresholds and discrimination for certain speech sounds, 10 individuals received tape recorded programs of speech signals transduced into vibrotactile information. Stimuli were presented to the fingertip, palm, wrist, forearm, and thigh. Results indicated that thresholds of detection could be elicited at all five body…

Given reflection symmetry, the moment generating function symmetry is necessary and sufficient for the random walk model to be equivalent to a sequential probability ratio test. For a related article, see TM 501 715. (Author/RC)

Research supported by University of Massachusetts Faculty Research Grant, National Institute of Mental Health grant MH-03803-06, and National Science Foundation grant GS-386.

The study involving 85 sixth through ninth graders tested J. Torgesen's hypothesis that learning disabled (LD) children's performance deficits occur as a result of a "passive" approach to tasks rather than a cognitive processing deficit as assumed by other existing definitions. LD students were matched with nonhandicapped peers and administered…

The effect of stimulus novelty, an attentional variable, on learning set acquisition was investigated. Learning set (LS) acquisition refers to an improvement in performance across a series of problems which have a common basis of solution. The design of this study involved two groups, one in which the positive stimulus on Trial 2 involved the…