Background: Frith and Happe (1994) describe central coherence (CC) as the normal tendency to integrate individual elements into a coherent whole, a cognitive style which varies in the general population. Individuals with autism are at the extreme (weak) end of the continuum of coherence. There has been debate over whether CC is independent from…

Background: This study presents two experiments that investigated whether children with autism were susceptible to the Thatcher illusion. Perception of the Thatcher illusion requires being able to compute second-order configural relations for facial stimuli. Method: In both experiments children with autism were matched for non-verbal and verbal…

The primary purpose of this study was to test two hypotheses proposed by Bracken and McCallum (1998), authors of the Universal Nonverbal Intelligence Test (UNIT), as to how children diagnosed with ADHD would perform on the UNIT. Twenty-nine students between the ages of 5 and 17 years were administered the extended battery of the UNIT twice, with…

The Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children (K-ABC) and the Stanford-Binet: Fourth Edition (S-B:FE) were administered in counterbalanced order to a sample of 20 middle-class preschool children (11 males and 9 females) attending the Early Childhood Preschool Center located in a suburban area of a large midwestern city. Subjects' mean age was 4…

The Stanford-Binet: Fourth Edition and Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children were administered in counterbalanced order followed by the Cognitive Domain of the Battelle Developmental Inventory to a sample of 30 nonhandicapped, preschool children (13 males and 17 females). Correlations (corrected for restriction in range) among the three…

In the high school testing program conducted by the USAF Recruiting Service there is occasional reference to relationships between the Airman Qualifying Examination and certain civilian tests. Information concerning these relationships can be useful to guidance counselors. This report contains data on the relationships between the Employee…

This study established a controlled instructional procedure for visual concept learning in a school setting and investigated the possibility that an ability trait difference could affect visual learning of the concept. A total of 84 high visualizers and 84 low visualizers were selected from 629 fourth grade children according to their scores on…

Using a conformity research methodology, the authors investigated the questions of whether (a) the Asch-type conformity setting produces greater yielding than variant settings where subjects are screened from one another and (b) the nonverbal element of contradictory or inconsistent nonverbal communications significantly alters response to the…

This kit presents all components of the Universal Nonverbal Intelligence Test (UNIT), a newly developed instrument designed to measure the general intelligence and cognitive abilities of children and adolescents (ages 5 through 17) who may be disadvantaged by traditional verbal and language-loaded measures such as children with speech, language,…

Psychological data were analyzed for 164 individuals (ages 3-15) with autism (IQs 14-143). Verbal IQ lagged behind nonverbal during the preschool years, but by school age the gap had closed. For school-age children with low IQs, math, spelling, and writing scores were consistent with IQ and reading was above IQ. (Contains references.) (Author/CR)

This study examined the arithmetic calculation abilities of kindergarten and first-grade children (n=108) with different patterns of cognitive functioning: low language, low spatial ability, general delays, and nonimpaired. Nonverbal, story, and number fact problems were differentially sensitive to variation in cognitive ability. (Author/JDD)

The Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Revised (WAIS-R) and the Cognitive Test for the Blind were used to compare verbal and nonverbal abstraction ability of adults who became blind before age 2 or after age 5 (when expressive language would have been developed). No significant differences were found, but variability of scores on the WAIS-R…

This study examined the construct validity of the Comprehensive Test of Nonverbal Intelligence (CTONI) in two separate investigations. The first study examined criterion-related evidence of validity across racial/ethnic groups on the CTONI and the Woodcock-Johnson Psychoeducational Tests of Achievement (3rd edition). The second study examined the…

The purpose of this study was to examine the utility of the Differential Ability Scales (DAS) in distinguishing preschoolers with specific language impairment (SLI) and specific subtypes of language delays. Three hundred forty-eight language-impaired preschoolers' response patterns across DAS General Conceptual Ability (GCA), Ability cluster, and…

The fourth phase of a longitudinal study focusing on the cognitive and language development of children in a primary-grade Spanish immersion program (SIP) is reported. Subjects were the remaining 13 members of an SIP cohort beginning in 1987, 15 members of a standard program comparison classroom, 18 members of another class in the 1987 SIP cohort,…