This study evaluated use of the Test of Nonverbal Intelligence Second Edition (TONI-2) with 258 individuals (ages 4 to 41) with autism. Results indicated that age, verbal ability, and lack of attention deficits were most predictive of TONI-2 scores, whereas attention deficits and a moderate number of autistic symptoms predicted untestability on…

A study compared 11 Italian children (ages 7-11) with nonverbal learning disabilities (NVLD) to 49 controls on four tasks requiring visuospatial working memory and visual imagery. Results found the children with NVLD showed deficits in the use of visuospatial working memory and visual imagery. (Author/CR)

This article reports 2 experiments examining the changing role of iconicity in symbol learning and its implications regarding the mechanisms supporting symbol-to-referent mapping. Experiment 1 compared 18- and 26-month-olds' mapping of iconic gestures (e.g., hopping gesture for a rabbit) vs. arbitrary gestures (e.g., dropping motion for a rabbit).…

Despite their purported neuroanatomic and functional isolation, empirical evidence suggests that sometimes conscious explicit processes can influence implicit motor skill learning. Our goal was to determine if the provision of explicit information affected implicit motor-sequence learning after damage to the basal ganglia. Individuals with stroke…

In a human fear conditioning paradigm using the skin conductance response (SCR), participants were assigned to two groups. Following identical acquisition, group ABA (n = 16) was extinguished to a generalization stimulus (GS), whereas group AAB (n = 20) was extinguished to the conditioned stimulus (CS). At test, presenting the CS in group ABA…

Although the Morris water task has been used in hundreds of studies of place learning, there have been no systematic studies of retention of the place memory. We report that retention, as measured by selective search behavior on a probe trial, is excellent when the retention interval is short (5-10 min). However, performance rapidly deteriorates,…

Visual discrimination tasks are increasingly used to explore the neurobiology of vision in rodents, but it remains unclear how the animals solve these tasks: Do they process shapes holistically, or by using low-level features such as luminance and angle acuity? In the present study we found that when discriminating triangles from squares, rats did…

In this article, the author discusses various conceptions about the teacher's body. He states that the teacher's body is not just a pile of organs and meat in a skin corset. As part of the performance metaphor--commonly read as part of education-as-spectacle--it translates institutional systems and institutional ideas into a social order, and at…

In two experiments subjects were required to determine whether a random, angular form, presented at any of a number of picture-plane orientations was a "standard" or "reflected" version. Average time required to make this determination increased linearly with the angular departure of the form from a previously learned orientation. (Author/BJG)

College freshmen who have poor educational backgrounds are found to be deficient in mathematics and often also lack skills in English. Their difficulty with basic mathematics is further aggravated by traditional teaching techniques that demand extensive reading ability and a thorough knowledge of English. At Morgan State College, a non-verbal…

Concomitant with a child's acquisition of phonological, syntactic, and semantic rules of an adult language is the need to learn pragmatic and contextual abilities for proper use of the language. As early language acquisition is closely allied with play, three children aged about 22 to 40 months were observed during play activities to determine…

In this study, representational thought, which involves the child's ability to function in terms of nonpresent reality, is viewed within a cognitive-developmental framework. To see if disadvantaged children would function in the same way as advantaged children on tasks which required representational thought rather than verbalization, children…

This paper summarizes data comparing the correlation patterns of psychometric, social, and demographic variables with intelligence quotient (IQ) and learning potential (LP) scores derived from the Kohs Block Designs and Raven Progressive Matrices procedures. The sample consists of educable mentally retarded special class and institutionalized…

Visual sequences should be the first visual literacy exercises for reasons that are physio-psychological, semantic, and curricular. In infancy, vision is undifferentiated and undetailed. The number of details a child sees increases with age. Therefore, a series of pictures, rather than one photograph which tells a whole story, is more appropriate…

A study was conducted to determine whether language provided for the child in discriminating specific criteria helps him significantly to learn to create and hold criteria for sorting, a major difference in the theories of Vygotsky and Piaget. Specifically three questions are investigated: (1) whether 3- to 5-year-old black ghetto children can be…