Logical problem solving by educable retarded adolescents and normal children.

Gave a simplified version of the logical problem-solving task developed by E. D. Neimark to 20 institutionalized and 18 noninstitutionalized retardates and to 20 children from kindergarten through 3rd grade. The performance of the retardates fell below that of the normals of equal mental age. Although the retardates and the younger children solved the problem when the critical information was supplied to them, most of these Ss could not generate the necessary information by themselves, and continued to make redundant responses. For the normals, performance improved up to 81/2-9 yrs of age, at which point 90% reached criterion. Training improved the performance of 7 yr olds but had little or no effect on the performance of 6 yr olds and institutionalized retarded adolescents. (17 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Tolerance for stress among institutionalized mildly retarded adolescents.

A sample of institutionalized adolescent borderline and mildly retarded patients was administered the mild stress of a mirror tracing task and a severe stress of hand cooling in ice-cold water for 25 minutes. The sample consisted of 4 subgroups selected by the ratings of nursing personnel along the 2 dimensions of good and poor adjustment to the authority structure of an institutional dormitory and good or poor internalized control of behavior in the dormitory. Performance in the 2 stress experiments reported was poorer for those patients who manifested poorer adjustment to the dormitory, and/or poor behavioral control. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Conversational competence and peer response to mildly retarded children.

This study investigated the relationship between mildy retarded children's conversational competence and their acceptance by regular education students. Ninety-four elementary school students watched videotapes in which mildly retarded children displayed either skill or lack of skill at conversational management. Half of the students were told the retarded children's special education placement; half were not. Students responded more positively when the mildly retarded children displayed skill at managing conversations, projecting that they would be liked by others in their classrooms. When the mildly retarded children showed problems with conversational management, students projected that they would be rejected or isolated by peers. These findings support the position that language can play an important role in children's response to their handicapped peers. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Transfer of categorial clustering set in mildly retarded adolescents

The relative effectiveness of instructions to adopt an organizational strategy vs. exposure to category labels was investigated. Twenty-four retarded adolescents were assigned to each of three conditions (blocking plus instructions, blocking plus labels, and blocking) for pretraining and training. Immediately after training, all subjects received a transfer task consisting of a new randomly organized list containing words from the same (training) categories for one-half of the subjects and from different categories for the other half. When exposure to category labels accompanied blocking, results indicated increased clustering and recall during the training phase and a trend toward increased clustering during the transfer phase.     

The effects of success and failure on the discrimination learning of normal and retarded children.

30 normal and 30 retarded children learned a 3-choice size discrimination following exposure to experimental tasks under conditions of success, failure, or neutrality. Both normal and retarded children learned more quickly following success and failure than under the neutral condition. In a 2nd study, 32 normal and 32 retarded children learned the same criterion task under success or failure conditions. Here, both success and failure again facilitated the performance of both normal and retarded Ss. Also, social responsivity interacted with intelligence and exeprimental conditions in influencing the children's learning. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cardiac and respiratory responses during visual search in nonretarded children and retarded adolescents

The relationship between physiological response patterns and mental competence was investigated by evaluating heart rate and respiratory responses during a sustained visual-search task in nonretarded grade school children and retarded adolescents. The findings support the contention that, during tasks demanding sustained attention, retarded relative to nonretarded individuals exhibit physiological responses that parallel their poor performance. Consistent with previous research with nonretarded adults, the nonretarded grade school children exhibited a suppression of respiratory and heart-rate variability during attention-demanding tasks. In contrast, the retarded adolescents exhibited increases in respiratory and heart-rate variability. These qualitative differences in physiological and behavioral responses, observed during sustained attention, may be viewed as a manifestation of retarded adolescents' defective nervous system.     

Numerosity discrimination: Both time and number matter.

Pigeons were trained on a psychophysical choice task to discriminate between 2 fixed ratios and tested with probe ratios intermediate to the training requirements. Absolute and relative ratio size were varied over conditions. In a final condition, Ss were transferred from the number-based discrimination to a time-based discrimination. The times taken to emit the ratios were recorded, and ratio value and ratio time were used to predict choice in a multiple regression analysis. Psychophysical analyses of the response number dimension suggested a scalar counting principle of numerosity discrimination, similar to that found with temporal dimensions. The multiple regression analysis indicated that both number and time contributed to the discrimination of ratio value. The results of the transfer test indicated individual differences in the degree to which responding was controlled by temporal vs numerical factors. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The pigeon's variability discrimination with lists of successively presented visual stimuli.

Pigeons previously trained to peck 1 button (same) after the successive presentation of 16 identical pictures and to peck a 2nd button (different) after the successive presentation of 16 nonidentical pictures were tested on lists involving different degrees of variability, different list lengths, and different temporal organizations of list items. The pigeons' performances on this successive same-different task revealed a strong sensitivity to list entropy; but, their discrimination was also affected by their memory for list items and by the accumulated evidence for a same versus a different response. Statistical models confirmed and quantified the importance of these additional factors. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Discrimination and switching learning in normal, familial retarded, and organic retarded children.

In an effort to explicate the contradictory findings of earlier studies, normals, familial retardates, and organic retardates at 2 MA levels were trained on either a 3-choice or a 2-choice discrimination task. Following solution of the original task Ss were switched to either a new 3-choice discrimination, a 2-choice transposition, or a 2-choice reversal problem. There were no significant types of S main effects on either the 1st or 2nd problems. It was concluded that the findings offered no support for the view that the cognitive functioning of retardates is inherently different from normals of the same MA. (16 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The assessment of effectance motivation in normal and retarded children.

Constructed several measures of effectance motivation and assessed their validity by administering them to groups of Ss whose motivation was assumed to differ. 37 normal, 32 noninstitutionalized retarded, and 34 institutionalized retarded children matched on MA were employed. For the 4 components of effectance motivation investigated-variation seeking, curiosity, mastery for the sake of competence, and preference for challenging tasks-normals demonstrated more effectance motivation than did either retarded group. The measures also proved sensitive to differences between the noninstitutionalized and institutionalized retarded. Verbal inquiry data resulted in a pattern of findings parallel to that obtained with the task measures, providing further support for the validity of the measures. Measurement problems and the need for constructing adequate developmental indices of effectance motivation are emphasized. (18 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Outer-directedness in the problem solving of normal and retarded children.

2 studies were conducted to test the hypothesis that the high incidence of failure experienced by retardates results in their employing an outer-directed style of problem solving. In Study I 20 retarded and 20 normal children matched on MA experienced either a success or a failure condition on 3 games and were then tested on 2 imitation tasks. Retardates were found to be more imitative than normals. All the children were found to be more imitative following the failure than the success condition. In Study II 20 normal and 20 retarded children matched on MA and divided into experimental and control groups performed on 2 object-assembly and 1 block-board task. In the experimental condition E engaged in certain behaviors that if attended to would interfere with S's performance on the 1st object-assembly task and facilitate performance on the 2nd object-assembly task, and which would provide S with a response that could be imitated on the block-board game. As predicted, the retarded experimental group did poorer than the normal experimental group on the 1st object-assembly task, but was superior to the normals on the 2nd object assembly task. They also showed a tendency to be more imitative on the block-board game, and they made more glances toward E. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

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)     

Read-out times from iconic memory in normal and retarded adolescents

The method limits was used to obtain an estimate of read-out times for a sample of 12 normal and 12 retarded subjects matched on chronological age. The procedure required tachistoscopic presentation of a stimulus array (2, 4, or 6 digits) for a variable duration, followed by a post-stimulus. The subject's task was to recall the digit indicated by the cue. The results indicated that read-out time (a) increased as the number of digits increased, (b) was longer for retardates relative to normals, and (c) decreased with practice for both intelligence groups. The implications of a read-out deficit in retarded individuals were discussed.     

Developmental changes in concept utilization among normal and retarded children.

Examined the concepts employed by 100 normal children in kindergarten-Grade 4 (Study 1), and by 48 retarded vs 48 normal children matched for mental ages ranging from 5 to 11 yrs (Study 2). Ss were required to select pairs of pictures from a large array of pictures depicting common objects and to explain the basis for their pairing responses. Factor analysis of the conceptual responses of normal Ss revealed factors for abstraction (nominal and functional concepts as opposed to perceptible concepts) and complimentarity ("go together" responses as opposed to similarity responses). Retarded Ss differed from normals primarily in their use of more complimentary and fewer similarity concepts. The developmental course of concept utilization for normals was characterized as a change from perceptible to nominal and functional concepts, while that for retarded Ss was characterized as a change from complimentary to similarity concepts. (21 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A comparison of discrimination and reversal learning for olfactory and visual stimuli in aged rats.

The present study investigated age-related differences in discrimination and reversal learning for olfactory and visual stimuli in 6-month and 24-month-old rats. Rats were trained to discriminate between two pseudo-randomly selected odors or objects. Once each animal reached a criterion on discrimination trials, the reward contingencies were reversed. Young and aged rats acquired the olfactory and visual discrimination tasks at similar rates. However, on reversal trials, aged rats required significantly more trials to reach the learning criterion on both the olfactory and visual reversal tasks than young rats. The deficit in reversal learning was comparable for odors and objects. Furthermore, the results showed that rats acquired the olfactory task more readily than the visual task. The present study represents the first examination of age-related differences in reversal learning using the same paradigm for odors and objects to facilitate cross-modal comparisons. The results may have important implications for the selection of memory paradigms for future research studies on aging. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Display variability and spatial organization as contributors to the pigeon's discrimination of complex visual stimuli.

Three experiments assessed the contributions of display variability and spatial organization to the pigeon's discrimination of 16-icon visual displays. After training to discriminate 4?×?4 arrays of same and different computer icons, 4 pigeons were shown testing displays that systematically manipulated the variability of the depicted icons and their spatial organization on the display screen. Display variability and spatial organization each reliably controlled the pigeon's behavior. These seemingly separate effects could be collectively explained by the pigeon's discriminating the amount of variability or entropy in localized regions of the display. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Left visual-field advantage in children for processing visual emotional stimuli.

Investigated cerebral asymmetries in children for perception of visually presented emotional and verbal material. 91 children in Grades 1–2, 4–5, and 8 reported on emotional facial expressions and in letters shown laterally and tachistoscopically. A left visual-field superiority for reporting on the facial expressions, and a right visual-field advantage for reporting on the letters were found, with the latter effect being stronger than the former. For both the emotional and verbal tasks, the degree of asymmetry was not significantly different across age groups. Findings show the right hemisphere is dominant for mediating visual emotional information from as early as 6 yrs of age, and data replicate the right hemispheric effect found for emotional intonation in speech. (31 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Factor analysis of the WISC-R for a group of mentally retarded children and adolescents.

Administered the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children--Revised (WISC--R) to 80 retarded youngsters ranging in CA from 6 to 16 yrs. Scaled scores on the 12 tests were correlated, and the matrix was subjected to several factor-analytic techniques. The 3 factors identified for normal children in a previous study of the WISC--R (Verbal Comprehension, Perceptual Organization, and Freedom from Distractibility) also emerged for the retardates, although some differences were observed in the distractibility factor. The WISC--R factor structure for retardates was also similar to the structure of the 1949 WISC that was identified for several groups of institutionalized and noninstitutionalized retardates. Results of the studies involving the 1949 WISC are reviewed critically to help understand the implications of the present findings. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Stimulus selection and irrelevant stimuli in discrimination learning by pigeons.

Studied discrimination learning in 2 experiments with 32 and 16 White Carneaux pigeons. Exp. I confirmed that Ss trained in a free-operant situation produce a sharper gradient of generalization around a specific irrelevant stimulus if they are given true discrimination (TD) training than if given pseudodiscrimination (PD) training. An additional pair of groups, however, showed that this difference could be eliminated if, after initial training but before the test for generalization, both TD and PD Ss were given TD training on an entirely independent set of stimuli. This suggests that the normally flat PD gradient may represent a test effect: control by the specific irrelevant stimulus is masked by other more powerful irrelevant stimuli that are only suppressed by TD training. Exp. II demonstrated that in a discrete-trial situation, PD training results in a sharper gradient than does TD training, suggesting that the other unidentified irrelevant stimuli are present only in free-operant situations. (15 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of spatial separation and similarity of stimuli on discrimination learning of children and adults.

32 females and 32 males from each of 3 levels-kindergarten, 2nd grade, and college-were given a 2-choice simultaneous discrimination task in which the stimuli were separated either by 6.35 or 25.4 cm. 2 levels of stimulus similarity were used. Increasing the distance between stimuli interfered with the learning of all age groups when the stimuli were highly similar. When stimuli were less similar, however, increasing the interstimulus distance retarded learning in children but not in adults. Results are consistent with findings that spatial separation of task components in a variety of situations interferes more with the performance of children than with that of adults. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)