Increased variability in reaction time (RT) has been proposed as a cardinal feature of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Increased variability during sustained attention tasks may reflect inefficient fronto-striatal and fronto-parietal circuitry; activity within these circuits is modulated by the catecholamines. A disruption to…

Eighteen boys, 10 to 11 years of age, with learning disorders were compared with normally achieving boys on an attention demanding task under the conditions of constant stimulation and stimulus change. (Author/MC)

Fifteen autistic and 15 normal Ss were trained to respond to a card containing two visual cues. The children were further tested on the single cues in order to assess whether one or both stimuli had acquired control over their responding. (Editor/RK)

Research conducted at Fels Research Institute and supported in part by grants HD-00868, FR-00222, and FR-05537 from the National Institute of Mental Health.

Recent theoretical analyses have implied that there may be age differences in children's tendency to exercise component selection, i.e., to attend selectively to a single component of stimulus objects in a learning situation. In the present study, 6 experiments were conducted, each designed to investigate developmental changes in component…

Selective attention was assessed in second, fourth, and sixth grade reflective and impulsive children with an incidental learning task using pictures (animal-household object pairs) or shapes (colored forms) as stimuli. By the sixth grade, reflective children displayed less incidental learning and greater central learning than impulsive children…

Two studies examined serial recall process of first-grade Canadian children from inner-city and suburban backgrounds. In the first study significant differences were found in the serial position curve of recall. Suburban children recalled a greater number of early-presented, primacy items, while inner-city children who had equivalent span…

A study involving eight boys with autism and eight boys with Down syndrome (ages 6-10) with similar adaptive behavior levels used an ecological approach to study the in-depth structure of the behavior stream. Narrative records were collected and analyzed based on duration and frequency of behaviors. Each record was analyzed by marking the behavior…

A child whose behavior reflects only perception of a stimulus and reaction to it is considered more perceptually bound than an adult whose behavior is also directed by theories, values, and ideas. Based on this analysis three testable hypotheses emrege: (1) stimulus complexity is a better predictor of attention for the more perceptually bound, (2)…

This project has been directed towards the development of procedures for assessing children's curiosity. Better procedures are needed to reach one of the long-range goals of Center Program III: an understanding of the relationship of curiosity to academic achievement and other cognitive skills, styles and motives. This paper reviews briefly some…