A six-year-old nonvocal girl with autism who had acquired a variety of signs and imitative responses consistently failed to acquire a tact (labeling) repertoire. When procedures to transfer stimulus control from verbal to nonverbal stimuli were implemented, the subject quickly learned to tact all 18 target stimuli. (Author/DB)

This study investigated conditions for optimizing college students' analogical problem solving. Students given pictorial (not verbal) representations of solutions to source problems were better problem solvers, as were students given a longer time. Students who derived personal solution principles to source problems were not superior to students…

Examination of the influence of verbal working memory on sentence comprehension in 12 children with specific language impairment suggested that: (1) these children have less functional verbal working memory capacity than chronological age peers and (2) have greater difficulty managing working memory and general processing abilities than both age…

Comparison of 13 children with mild-to-moderate sensorineural hearing loss but normal language skills and 12 children with normal hearing and development found no significant group differences on three verbal metaphor tasks (comprehension, preference, and completion), and one visual metaphor task. (Author/DB)

This article discuses how educators can challenge gifted students with classical literature, enriched vocabulary, and the study of grammar. It argues that classic literature presents a complete spectrum of challenge at many levels, including the level of language, the level of idea, and the level of meaning. (Contains three references.) (CR)

The influence of neurological and demographic variables on neuropsychological test performance was examined in 100 9- to 16-year-old children with traumatic brain injury (TBI). Regression analyses were conducted to determine the relative contributions of coma, neuroimaging findings, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and gender to variance in…

Testing homogeneity of correlations with Fisher's Z is inappropriate when correlations are themselves correlated. Suppose measurements of brain activation and performance are taken before and during a verbal memory task. Of interest are changes in activity gradients in specific regions, R1, R2, R3, and performance, V. The "correlated correlations"…

Two studies investigated the effects of verbalization of discovered generalizations on the retention of those principles. (SD)

Short-term memory for single-syllable words is negatively related to the number of semantic categories from which the words are drawn. Test results are inconsistent with any theory postulating a separate short-term memory that takes no account of semantic factors. (CHK)

The primary purpose of the study was the improvement of reading, listening and verbal comprehension skills through the use of six weeks of compressed speech during language arts classes. (Author)

When subjects utter a series of redundant sounds while memorizing word lists, performance is impaired and phonemic similarity effect is reduced. Experiments explored the influence of articulatory suppression on free recall; neither showed interaction between suppression and serial position. Recency effect may not reflect short-term phonemic store.…

Presents a learning theory in the language of cybernetics based on the tenet that the minimal experimental situation for making psychological observations is a conversation. The account is directed at generating interest in the original work by G. Pask, et al. (GS)

Composition researchers and teachers grant that the relationship of non-verbal thinking and language plays a crucial role in the writing of fiction and poetry, but they are sometimes reluctant to perceive that non-verbal thinking must, necessarily, be crucial, with different emphases, in the thinking/writing processes of rhetoric. Activities and…

This study investigated the use readers make of visual and verbal illustration to understand and remember what they have read. Specific focus was placed on readers' use of pictures and analogies to understand and remember written directions for a spatial manipulation task. The independent variables measured were type of text, mode of illustration,…