The study of 813 learning disabled children (ages 6-11) with test-retest data (after three years) on 224 children found the children to suffer a progressive deterioration in verbal ability whereas their nonverbal ability showed an increase in the earlier years, leveling off thereafter. (Author/DB)

Investigated the ontogenesis of oddity learning. Children and adults were tested on two versions of the oddity task using nonverbal procedures. Results suggested that children use different strategies to solve different versions of the oddity task, and in tasks in which stimuli are presented simultaneously, behavior may be controlled by stimulus…

Spontaneous recovery from extinction is one of the most basic phenomena of Pavlovian conditioning. Although it can be studied by using a variety of designs, some procedures are better than others for identifying the involvement of underlying learning processes. A wide range of different learning mechanisms has been suggested as being engaged by…

Psychological research shows that learning can be powerfully enhanced through testing, but this finding has so far been confined to memory tasks requiring verbal responses. We explored whether testing can enhance learning of visuospatial information in maps. Fifty subjects each studied 2 maps, one through conventional study, and the other through…

It has been suggested that the differences observed for dyslexic readers compared to normal readers on tasks measuring visual sensitivity may simply be the result of differences between the two groups in general cognitive ability and/or attentional engagement. One common way to accommodate this proposal is to match normal and dyslexic readers on…

Intelligence Quotient (IQ) tests show that there is a rise in IQ measurement up to age 5 1/2, yet the IQ levels off and drops at age 8 1/2. The shift from unrestricted television viewing for preschoolers to the emphasis on verbal communication in school may be the cause. Visual languages within a symbolic system could be one method of…

A discussion of learning potential among educable retardates reflects the author's findings that some solved difficult problems on the Kohs block designs, some did not do well at first but improved after coaching, and some did not do well before or after coaching. Additional studies of these highscorers, gainers, and nongainers are cited which…

The play behavior of young children is viewed as a behavioral manifestation of nonverbal thinking. Discussed are issues of relevance to the understanding of the development of thought in general and of the symbolic function in particular. A line of development is proposed which leads from early nonverbal thought as manifested in play, either…

Introspective experiences that nine University of Tulsa (Oklahoma) faculty members (aged 29-52 years) have when acquiring cognitive skills without awareness were studied as they acquired nonconscious knowledge about a pattern of stimuli. Nonconsciously acquired knowledge was automatically used to facilitate performance, without conscious…

The study examined the correlations between academic achievement and scores on the Hiskey-Nebraska Test of Learning Aptitude, the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Revised (WAIS-R) Performance Scale, with 35 deaf high school students. Results validated the use of the WAIS-R as a predictor of academic achievement for this population. (DB)

Nonretarded trainable retarded and mildly retarded individuals (N=106), matched on MA, attempted to identify emotional states of tape-recorded voices speaking in an unfamiliar language. Although analyses indicated that trainable subjects were less accurate overall than were mildly retarded and nonretarded subjects, all three groups were able to…

Content analysis of the Columbia Mental Maturity Scale and the Test of Nonverbal Intelligence (TONI) revealed differences in the nature of perceptual and conceptual items. Both language-impaired and normal-language children performed significantly better on perceptual-type than conceptual-type items. The predominance of perceptual items was…

Comparison of external memory strategies in 31 children (ages 11 and 17) with mild mental retardation and 64 children without mental retardation found no differences between children with mental retardation and their age peers in frequency of use of object-oriented strategies. For all groups, external strategies were used more frequently than…

Presents results of a test of nonmusic majors' ability to remember song titles. Suggests that, although the process of categorization seems to be a basic function of perception, appropriate categorization needs to be learned. Supports the view that music learning, like verbal learning, involves a categorization of stimuli based on holistic…