The study examined the correlations between academic achievement and scores on the Hiskey-Nebraska Test of Learning Aptitude, the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Revised (WAIS-R) Performance Scale, with 35 deaf high school students. Results validated the use of the WAIS-R as a predictor of academic achievement for this population. (DB)

Nonretarded trainable retarded and mildly retarded individuals (N=106), matched on MA, attempted to identify emotional states of tape-recorded voices speaking in an unfamiliar language. Although analyses indicated that trainable subjects were less accurate overall than were mildly retarded and nonretarded subjects, all three groups were able to…

Content analysis of the Columbia Mental Maturity Scale and the Test of Nonverbal Intelligence (TONI) revealed differences in the nature of perceptual and conceptual items. Both language-impaired and normal-language children performed significantly better on perceptual-type than conceptual-type items. The predominance of perceptual items was…

Comparison of external memory strategies in 31 children (ages 11 and 17) with mild mental retardation and 64 children without mental retardation found no differences between children with mental retardation and their age peers in frequency of use of object-oriented strategies. For all groups, external strategies were used more frequently than…

Presents results of a test of nonmusic majors' ability to remember song titles. Suggests that, although the process of categorization seems to be a basic function of perception, appropriate categorization needs to be learned. Supports the view that music learning, like verbal learning, involves a categorization of stimuli based on holistic…

There is some consensus in the literature regarding the cognitive profile of people with Asperger syndrome (AS). Findings to date suggest that a proportion of people with AS have higher verbal than performance IQ, a non-verbal learning disability (NVLD) and impairments in some aspects of executive function (EF). However, there are few published…

Pavlovian stimuli can markedly elevate instrumental responding, an effect known as Pavlovian-instrumental transfer (PIT). As the role of the ventral tegmental area (VTA) in PIT is yet unknown, we examined the effects of transient VTA inactivation by direct microinjections of a mixture of the GABA[subscript A] and GABA[subscript B] receptor…

The ability to detect and learn about the predictive relations existing between events in the world is essential for adaptive behavior. It allows us to use past events to predict the future and to adjust our behavior accordingly. Pavlovian fear conditioning allows anticipation of sources of danger in the environment. It guides attention away from…

When an odor is paired with a delayed illness, rats acquire a relatively weak odor aversion. In contrast, rats develop a strong aversion to an olfactory cue paired with delayed illness if it is presented simultaneously with a gustatory cue. Such a conditioning effect has been referred to as taste-potentiated odor aversion learning (TPOA). TPOA is…

Fear extinction is defined as a decline in conditioned fear responses (CRs) following nonreinforced exposure to a feared conditioned stimulus (CS). Behavioral evidence indicates that extinction is a form of inhibitory learning: Extinguished fear responses reappear with the passage of time (spontaneous recovery), a shift of context (renewal), and…

Because differences among students in modes of thinking bear directly on teaching methods, the author presented some research that has been done on individual differences in thinking modalities and considered its relevance to teaching. (Author/RK)

The paper examines aspects of effective language intervention with autistic children. An overview is presented about the nature of language, its perception and comprehension, and the production of speech-language. Assessment strategies are considered. The second part of the paper analyzes traditional and communications-based intervention programs.…

The relationship was explored between the ability to understand nonverbal metaphoric similarity and the ability to produce verbal metaphors to talk about that similarity. Subjects, 45 college students, were shown filmed scenes that depicted both metaphoric and literal similarity. Half of the scenes were of stationary objects and half of moving…

Treatment of theory as an analytic tool, translation of the structure of a theory into nonverbal media, and utilization of projects for the application of a theory to elicit consequences for evaluation can be used to enable students to learn sociological theory in a classroom setting by means of experience. (Author/ND)