Effect of speed of exposure and difficulty of discrimination on visual recognition of retarded readers.

Administered a tachistoscopic recognition task to 36 retarded and 36 normal 6-7 yr old readers to determine whether retarded Ss' visual-perceptual deficit was a function of speed of exposure and/or difficulty of discriminating alternatives on response cards. 3 time exposures were employed, and there were 2 sets of response cards. All cells in the factorial design were independent, and the same stimuli were presented tachistoscopically to all Ss. It was found that speed of exposure, not difficulty of response cards, differentiated between retarded and normal Ss. At the faster exposures of 10 msec and 1 sec, retarded Ss performed significantly less well than normals, but they equaled the performance of normals at the slower exposure of 5 sec. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of IQ and mental age on hypothesis behavior in normal and retarded children.

156 mental-age-matched normal and retarded Ss at mental-age (MA) levels of 5.5, 7.5, and 9.5 yrs received blank-trial discrimination problems designed to expose hypothesis behavior. There was evidence that Ss at all MA levels used hypotheses. Use of feedback indicating that a response was wrong increased significantly with MA, while use of feedback indicating that a response was right increased significantly with IQ. On simple problems involving 2 stimulus dimensions, retarded and normal groups used about equal numbers of hypotheses, but on 4-dimensional problems the retarded used fewer hypotheses than normals. It is suggested that this IQ Level * Problem Complexity interaction may explain contradictions among previous findings regarding IQ effects on learning. (20 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Learning disabled and normal college students' performance on reaction time and speeded classification tasks.

Examined the efficiency with which 24 learning-disabled (LD [mean Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale—Revised Full-Scale IQ 105.04]) and 24 non-learning-disabled (NLD) college students performed basic cognitive-processing tasks. A simple visual reaction time (RT) and 3 speeded classification tasks were used. Results indicate that the LD Ss were slower and more variable on the speeded classification tasks than were the NLD Ss; however, the 2 groups did not differ on the simple visual RT task. Findings suggest that the deficits in higher cognitive processing found in younger LD children persist into early adulthood. It is argued that this failure to automatize very basic subskills may relate to central nervous system (CNS) dysfunction among the LD. (34 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Learning set acquisition in autistic children.

Compared the performance of 19 autistic 5-13 yr olds (mean MA: 4 yrs, 3 mo) on an object discrimination learning set task with that of MA and IQ matched control groups of normal and retarded Ss. All but 2 of the autistic Ss acquired a learning set. About 1/2 of the Ss in each control group also acquired a learning set. However, the mean number of problems to criterion was similar for both the autistic and control groups of Ss who acquired a learning set. It is suggested that the superior performance of autistic Ss on a task which is believed to be related to MA indicates that the MA of these children may be higher than that which is usually obtained with standard measuring techniques. Results provided somewhat equivocal evidence for a relation between MA, IQ, and learning set formation in the normal and retarded Ss. (24 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Expectancy of success and the probability learning of retarded children.

Tested 23 male and 22 female institutionalized retarded children who had previously experienced either a success, failure, or control precondition on a probability learning task designed to assess expectancy of success. Ss were matched for CA, MA, IQ, and length of institutionalization. The following measures were also collected as S variables: Locus-of-Control Scale, Cottage Rating Scales, school rating, and Reading and Arithmetic subscales from the Metropolitan Achievement Test. The preconditions were found to have many of the expected effects on the cognitive strategies employed in the learning task. Ss in the failure condition showed the greatest avoidance of failure (maximizing strategy), while Ss in the success condition tended to show more success striving (lose-shift strategy). Males were found to exhibit more failure-avoiding strategies than females. The overall pattern of results is interpreted as providing support for the hypothesis that a low expectancy of success in retarded children can be modified. (19 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Discrimination skill as a predictor of prevocational performance of institutionalized mentally retarded clients.

Two experiments investigated whether an assessment of the discrimination skills of institutionalized mentally retarded clients would provide information regarding subsequent prevocational performance. During Exp I, the 2-choice discrimination skills of 20 Ss were assessed with 6 diagnostic tasks: imitation, position, visual, matching-to-sample, auditory, and combined auditory-visual. Following assessment, 12 (aged 19–55 yrs; IQs 17–58) of the 20 Ss were administered several criterion tasks to determine the accuracy of prediction of the assessment tasks on prevocational analog tasks. During Exp II, 9 of the 12 Ss were administered a prevocational sorting task, and the accuracy of prediction of the discrimination assessment was again evaluated. Findings indicate that the assessment was useful in predicting performance across most of the analog tasks and the prevocational sorting task. Implications for the assessment and prevocational training of moderately and severely handicapped persons are discussed. (23 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of competing and complex responses on the reaction time of acute psychiatric groups.

Compared 8 acute nonparanoid schizophrenics to 12 depressed and 29 nonpsychotic psychiatric controls (age range = 18-41 yrs) to determine if schizophrenic deficit on 4 auditory reaction time tasks was a function of slower rate of processing information. The tasks varied along the dimensions of complexity (simple vs 2-choice) and competition (low vs high). It was hypothesized that slower processing rate implied slower reaction time on the simple tasks and greater slowing down on the complex tasks. Some Ss in each group were tested 2 times to determine the relative stability of the deficit. Essentially, for both testing sessions schizophrenics were slower than both control groups on all 4 tasks. However, they slowed down more than the nonpsychotic group only on the complex task with high competition. The depressed group, which performed like the nonpsychotic group on the 3 other tasks, also slowed down more than the nonpsychotic group on this task, but only on the 1st testing session. It is concluded that schizophrenic deficit was stable and did not arise primarily from slower rate of processing data, although interference might have augmented it. (17 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Sources of judgmental impairment in paranoid and nonparanoid schizophrenics.

While it is known that schizophrenic patients perform more poorly than nonschizophrenics on most cognitive tasks, the specific nature of their impairment is unclear. Social judgment theory suggests both procedures and analyses that may clarify this situation. The present study evaluated the performance of schizophrenics on the judgment indices of task knowledge and cognitive control. 12 paranoid schizophrenics, 12 nonparanoids, and 12 nonschizophrenic psychiatric patients completed 60 trials of a complex judgment task. Although all Ss were males, they were not controlled for age, education, or intelligence variables. Some Ss were rated with the Short Scale for Rating Paranoid Schizophrenia. Both groups of schizophrenics performed more poorly than normals, although only nonparanoids demonstrated significant impairment. Analysis of the component indices of performance indicated that the schizophrenic subgroups demonstrated contrasting forms of impairment. Paranoids evidenced poorer task knowledge than nonschizophrenics, whereas nonparanoids were impaired on control. Results may have relevance for identifying sources of cognitive dysfunction and for suggesting differential therapeutic strategies with these patients. (34 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cognitive controls and psychopathology.

Studied 90 psychiatric inpatients (nonpsychotic, nonschizophrenic psychotic, schizophrenic) and 35 normal controls to (a) determine whether some of the traditional cognitive controls could be isolated in these patients and (b) evaluate whether various diagnostic groups differed from each other and from normals in terms of these congitive controls. Ss were administered a battery of cognitive control tasks (e.g., the Phillips Scale of Premorbid Adjustment, WAIS, and Rorschach tests). With age, socioeconomic status, and verbal IQ as covariates, the factor structure for the total group was similar to that reported in other studies of cognitive control organization in the normal population. Schizophrenic and other psychiatric patients were not characterized by distinctly different organizations of cognitive controls. Although patients showed specific areas of cognitive dysfunctions, these seemed to be related to degree of disorganization. (41 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Intra-oral shape recognition by 138 mentally retarded subjects

Among Ss with normal intelligence, oral shape-recognition tests have shown a relationship between articulatory ability and oral sensory integrity. This investigation explored oral sensory impairment as a possible contributory cause of the articulatory difficulties exhibited by the mentally retarded. The Florida Oral-form Recognition Measure (FORM), a task requiring the intra-oral identification of 10 geometric shapes, was administered to 138 mentally retarded Ss. Twenty Ss were retested to establish reliability. Ss were placed in groups according to etiological categories (AAMD classification) and were assigned speech ratings by a speech pathologist. Of the total sample, 86% had varying degrees of defective speech or language. Mean FORM score was 3.5, and preliminary analysis yielded significant correlations between FORM score and IQ and between speech and language rating. Further multivariate analysis with IQ held as a co-variant indicated no significant relationship between FORM score and communicative ability. This suggests caution in inferring that intra-oral shape-recognition scores reflect degree of oral sensory integrity. Perhaps a battery of oral perceptual tasks might more validly assess oral sensation-perception and aid in clarifying its relationship to speech.     

Paired-associate and serial learning in retarded readers.

Exp I examined 68 9-13 yr old retarded readers on a paired associate task using the anticipation method and a serial-learning task using the study-test method. Intratask correlations were highly significant for each task, but intertask correlations were negligible. However, the 2 tasks also differed in difficulty. Exp II, with 27 additional like Ss, tested whether serial learning was easier with the anticipation method and whether paired associate and serial learning performance remained unrelated when difficulty was comparable. Serial learning was significantly easier, scores were comparable to paired associate scores, and most paired associate and serial learning measures were highly correlated. It is concluded that the performance of retarded readers may be determined more by difficulty than by type of task. Anticipation methods may be preferable to study-test methods for such children. (17 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of distraction on performance of obese and normal subjects.

Conducted 2 experiments with male undergraduates to determine whether, while working on tasks requiring concentration, overweight Ss (n = 60) would be more distracted than normals (n = 60) by competing, irrelevant material. In measures of proof-reading accuracy and reaction-time latency, overweight Ss were more disrupted than normals by interesting, emotionally toned material, while they performed better than normals when there were no distracting events. Overweight Ss also thought about the tasks more than normals when there was no distraction, suggesting that differences in attention to the tasks may have produced the obtained effect. These findings are considered within the context of the heightened responsiveness of the obese to a wide range of external cues. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cognitive processes in normal and hyperactive children and their response to amphetamine treatment.

14 normal (mean age 10.1 yrs) and 15 hyperactive (mean age 9.4 yrs) children were compared on cognitive tasks following placebo or amphetamine administration (.5 mg/kg) in a double-blind crossover study. A no-treatment control group of normal children who were matched with the hyperactive Ss on age, IQ, and socioeconomic status were also tested on the cognitive measures. In the undrugged state, normals remembered more information under free-recall retrieval conditions than did hyperactives; cued recall did not differentiate between the 2 groups. Both normals and hyperactives demonstrated similar, amphetamine-related increases in the recall of semantically and acoustically processed words. This enhancement of cognition occurred along with improvements in attention but was independent of such attentional changes. The pattern of amphetamine-induced changes in cognition is generally similar in normal and hyperactive children. Differences in response to amphetamine that do appear involve components of cognition that distinguish these children in the undrugged state (e.g., semantic processing, organization in recall, and free retrieval of information). (37 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The Lock Box: A measure of psychomotor competence and organized behavior in retarded and normal preschoolers.

The Lock Box, a large container with 10 latched compartments each housing a different toy, is a standardized method for evaluating the preschool child's approach to an unstructured situation. From the spontaneous behavior, coded over 6? min, scales were derived measuring psychomotor competence, organization of exploration, and aimlessness. The test was administered to 290 normal (mean IQ 111.4) and 91 retarded (mean IQ 58.1) children between the ages of 2 and 7 yrs. In the normal group, scores were highly correlated with CA but not with sex, socioeconomic status, or IQ. Retarded Ss performed significantly more poorly than normal Ss of similar age on all scales, with the greatest discrepancies apparent on an aimless actions scale. The excessive aimlessness of the retarded was evident when competence and tested intelligence were controlled. Findings are related to the development of orderly exploratory patterns in normal and retarded children. (27 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Visual motor performance of psychotic children.

Explored visual motor deviations by means of a Childhood Psychosis Scale applied to the Primary Visual-Motor Test protocols of 130 psychotic children (6–12 yrs), and 507 normal and retarded (IQ range 35–79) controls. 45.4% of the psychotic sample achieved critical scores on the scale as compared to 1.7% of the normal Ss and 12.9% of the retarded Ss. It was possible to match 94 of the psychotic children with nonpsychotic controls on the basis of CA and MA. Significantly more psychotics than matched controls were high scorers. Correlations with MA were moderately significant for each group. In IQ comparisons, significantly more psychotics who were retarded had critical scores than did normal-IQ psychotics. Age at diagnosis, type and length of treatment, recency of diagnosis, and degree of organicity did not discriminate between high- and low-responding psychotics. Base rate problems and theoretical aspects of the scale items are discussed. The scale appears useful as a screening device for normal and retarded children under the age of 13 yrs, with particular utility in detecting psychotic aspects of functioning among the retarded. (31 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

EMG biofeedback training of Type A and Type B behavior pattern subjects.

Assessed the relative efficacy of EMG biofeedback training to reduce tension levels in Ss characterized either by the presence of the coronary-prone behavior pattern (Type A) or by its absence (Type B). 55 college students, classified as Type A or B on the basis of Jenkins Activity Survey (Form T) scores, were randomly assigned to either a biofeedback or a control group. Ss met for 6 training sessions, then returned for a 7th session to perform without biofeedback a series of easy (4-digit recall) and difficult (7-digit recall) tasks. Biofeedback Ss attained a greater degree of relaxation during training than did control Ss, regardless of A/B status. Also, biofeedback Ss maintained greater relaxation during task performance than did control Ss. Across groups, Type A's performed significantly better than Type B's on difficult tasks, and although Type A biofeedback Ss had EMG levels as high as Type B controls for the actual duration of performance tasks, they maintained significantly lower EMG levels than either group prior to, between, and after performance tasks. (22 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Breadth of deviate concepts used by schizophrenics.

This study investigated interfering overresponsiveness to a conceptual task in schizophrenics and attempted to isolate other situational conditions under which it occurs. The hypothesis was "the schizophrenic tendency to overinclude in a sorting task is positively related to the degree to which incorrect items share common qualities with the correct items in a given conceptual category." One normal and 2 schizophrenic groups, consisting of 24 males each, served as Ss. The results of the sorting tasks confirmed the hypothesis. An attempt was also made to determine whether schizophrenics showed excessive narrowing of the conceptual basis for sorting, but no difference between schizophrenics and normals was found. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

"Learning potential" as an assessment approach to the adolescent mentally retarded.

Studies with the educable mentally retarded have shown that, given a period of sufficient training and practice on motor tasks, the final level of performance achieved overlaps that of Ss with average IQs. The present study reports data fitting with this result using a reasoning task, the Kohs Blocks. Institutionalized adolescents, Stanford-Binet IQ range 42 to 75 were used. Experimental Ss were coached on a parallel series of block designs. Initial performance level on the task approximated the level predicted from the Binet IQs. Scores of the coached Ss on the Kohs series administered 1 day and 1 mo. following coaching demonstrated markedly increased proficiency. The discussion questioned the adequacy of present criteria used in categorizing the retarded. It suggested that the approach of this study, i.e., obtaining an estimate of potential for profiting from a nonschool related reasoning task on which they are appropriately coached in an ego-supportive context, may prove to be a useful supplementary technique to predict adult status. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Role of interference in retention by rats with hippocampal lesions.

Studied involvement of the hippocampus in memory in 22 male albino Sprague-Dawley rats by employing a retention task with and without interpolated activity. Ss with extensive damage to hippocampus were able to relearn a preoperatively acquired single-alternation task with savings and to perform the single alternation with relatively long delays at a level similar to that of control Ss. However, hippocampals were more affected than normals by an interpolated activity that interferes with retention. The finding of normal retention combined with increased susceptibility to interference supports the view that the memory impairment in Ss with damage to hippocampus may be due to an excess of interference among stored information. (28 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Field independence and intelligence: Their relation to leadership and self-concept in sixth-grade boys.

Investigated the relationship between intelligence, field dependence, leadership, and self-concept. 88 6th-grade boys were given the Piers-Harris Children's Self-Concept Scale and the Group Embedded Figures Test, and their IQs were measured by the Short Form Test of Academic Aptitude. Ten groups of 4 were formed consisting of Ss with different combinations of high and low scores on the IQ and cognitive style measures, and the groups worked on an unstructured construction task. Following each session, members of the group rated each other on leadership, and the percentage of speech time for each S was obtained from tape recordings. Field independence was related to intelligence and self-concept, and analytic Ss exhibited more leadership than global Ss, while IQ did not differentiate Ss on any variable. (20 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)