Groups of 7 1/2-month-old infants heard 1 of 8 episodes consisting of no, slight, moderate, or large discrepancy between a habituated standard and a transformed auditory stimulus. Patterns of cardiac deceleration supported the hypothesis that attentiveness is an inverted-U function of the degree of discrepancy between stimulus event and schema.…

Longitudinal research indicates that high levels of overactivity, limited attention span, and impulsivity (diagnostic indicators of Attention Deficit Disorder) observed at preschool age are likely to be associated with continued difficulties at school age. However, the prediction of outcome for individual children is not straightforward.…

A study of 27 promising programs reveals 8 common reasons that educational innovations fail, including disenchanted practitioners; departure of innovation supporters; lack of personnel training; disappearing funding; inadequate supervision; and lack of accountability, administrative support, and termination consequences. Innovations succeed by…

An investigation was made into the effects of observers' previous experience with the experimental task on acquisition and subsequent performance of modeled task behavior. Findings support Bandura's assertion that task familiarity may enhance attentiveness to the model. (Author/SB)

A qualitative study determined which factors in the museum exhibit environment or within the museum visitor may influence the visitor to attend an exhibit. Observations and interviews were conducted of 14 groups that visited a Chesapeake & Ohio steam locomotive at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan. An inductive or grounded theory…

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)

The attention controls of 30 learning disabled and 30 normal males (8-to 11-years-old) were tested by a vigilance task in which vigilance was defined as ability to detect infrequently occurring signals over a prolonged time period when signals were embedded in a background of regularly occurring events. (Author/GW)

Results support the contention that infant attention should be divided into separate attention-getting and attention-holding processes. (Author)

Suggests that to promote concentration, teachers must put active "thinking" ways of reading into the hands of students. (FL)

The clinical syndrome which relates most frequently to the reading-disabled child is the attention deficity disorder. The child psychiatrist will generally resort to medication only when behavioral management techniques have failed. The two most frequently used medications are Ritalin and Dexedrine, central nervous system stimulants. (JN)

Uses the habituation paradigm to investigate 3-month-old infants' abilities to recognize and discriminate among the faces of strangers. Infants consistently discriminated between photographs of faces following extensive exposure to one, and recognized something about the face they saw during habituation. Results suggest that similarity influences…

Looking times of 96 preschoolers were recorded as they were habituated on slides of sex-typed toys. After habituation, subjects were shown a test series of 24 slides. (Author/SS)