DISCRIMINATION IN THE SCHOOLS CAN ASSUME MANY FORMS. ONE KIND OF PREJUDICE INVOLVING THE ATTITUDES HELD TOWARD LOWER SOCIOECONOMIC CLASSES MAY BE TERMED "SITUATIONAL BIAS." IT IS DEFINED AS AN EVENT WHEREIN A PERSON, PERSONS, OR AN AGENCY DOES NOT HAVE FACILITIES AVAILABLE TO COUNTERACT THE ABSENCE OR PRESENCE OF A QUALITY OR ATTRIBUTE…

The role of memory factors in the vowel discrimination of normal and at-risk 8-week-old infants was examined by studying the categorical versus continuous discrimination of very brief vowels in a nonnutritive sucking paradigm. Discrimination of the silent delay interval between the last familiar and the first novel stimulus was also examined.…

Seven rhesus monkeys reared on diets high in phenylalanine to induce phenylketonuria (PKU--a metabolic disorder associated with mental retardation if untreated) were compared with normal, pair-fed, and younger controls; frontal brain-lesioned monkeys; and those raised on high-tryptophan diets in three object discrimination tasks. (Author)

In order to investigate the hypothesis that autistic children tend to learn new discriminations by responding to only a restricted number of available cues, this study assessed the feasibility of teaching autistic children to respond to multiple cues. (SB)

The role of the spatial relationship between target responses and reinforcers in the discrimination learning of six mentally retarded adults was evaluated. Results showed that discrimination performance was more efficient in the experimental condition (reinforcement located near the correct cue) than the control condition (reinforcement in common…

Three experiments involving 20 severely and profoundly mentally retarded adults revealed that redundant color cues did not facilitate visual discrimination of lexigrams, while random assignment of color and distinctive-feature training did facilitate visual discrimination. (CL)

Two experiments are reported that reveal the sources of the developmental difference reported by Crane and Ross that second graders learned more than sixth graders about attributes made relevant after solution of a discrimination task. Experiments use technique whereby children verbalize their hypotheses during solution of a discrimination…

The acquisition of language-receptive processes in preschool children was studied using a word association task. (ST)

This experiment was designed to examine the reinforcing effects not only of similar-dissimilar attitude statements, but also names of liked-disliked persons in a discrimination learning task. (Author)

It was concluded from the date that satiation plays a determining role in the continued utilization of an acquired response while distraction is a primary determinant of acquisition rate. (Authors)

The ability of M. Levine's subset-sampling assumptions to account for the decrease in response latency following the trial of the last error was investigated by employing a distributed stimulus set composed of four binary dimensions and a procedure which required Ss to make an overt response in order to sample each dimension. (Author)

These findings suggest that a high density of negative feedback induces both reflective and impulsive children to make fewer errors than does positive feedback. (Authors)