Sensitivity of 5- and 7-month-old infants to pictorial depth information

An Ames (1951, Psychological Monographs, 65(1, Whole No. 324)) static trapezoidal window, under monocular view, was used to test young infants' responsiveness to pictorial depth. When adults view this display monocularly with the smaller side of the window rotated toward them, they report that the orientation of the display becomes ambiguous: When the head is moved, the window may appear to be in the fronto-parallel plane or either side may appear closer. The 7-month-olds we tested appeared to experience a similar ambiguity; they reached to the near side of the rotated trapezoidal window with significantly less consistency or directedness than infants in a control group tested with a rotated object that lacked pictorial depth information. When 5-month-olds were tested, however, they reached with equal consistency to the closer side of the trapezoidal window and of the control display, apparently uninfluenced by the pictorial depth information available in the trapezoidal window. Thus, sensitivity to the pictorial information for depth that is present in the trapezoidal window appears to develop after the age of 22 weeks.     

Teaching awareness of strategic behavior in combination with strategy training: Effects on children's memory performance

The present study examined the effectiveness of two components (rehearsal training and strategy awareness) of an instructional package designed to train the developmentally young in the use of mature information processing techniques. Two groups of children of equivalent developmental age (MA = 8), one mildly retarded and the other of average intelligence, participated. Rehearsal training was effective in improving recall scores on the training task; however, neither rehearsal training, memory awareness, nor their combination significantly altered memory performance on the generalization tasks. There was evidence, however, that the combination of rehearsal training and strategy awareness did increase the likelihood of strategy transfer on the generalization task (recognition) which most closely resembled the training task. Post-task questioning revealed that instructions concerning memory awareness did improve subjects ability to verbalize appropriate strategic behavior; however, these improvements were not consistently translated into either actual use of a rehearsal strategy or improved performance. Discussion centered on the implications of these results and on the need for increased research on the metamnemonic skills involved in strategy generalization.     

Imposed latencies,interruptions and dyadic interaction: Physiological response and interpersonal attraction

This study explored the impact of paralinguistic phenomena on interpersonal attraction and physiological measures during dyadic interaction. Conversations between undergraduate subjects and same-sex experimenters were either synchronous or asynchronous, with half the asynchronous conversations including imposed long latencies and the remainder frequent interruptions. Results showed that imposed latencies were associated with decreased positive attributions and greater physiological arousal, but interruptions had a moderately positive effect. The findings were discussed in terms of Chapple's theory of interaction, and their implications for psychotherapy and other interviews.     

Are there constraints on childhood disfluency?

Analysis of the spontaneous speech of eight stuttering and eight normally fluent children reveals that (a) the location of both stuttering and normal disfluent moments is constrained by sentential constituent structure, and (b) stuttering children experience fluency breakdown with a particular type of constituent (verb phrase) not usually disfluently produced by normals. A view of early stuttering as a sentence planning and integration disorder is present.     

Stuttering and fluency: Exclusive events or points on a continuum?

In recent years, several studies have been conducted in which the fluency of stutterers was compared with that of normal speakers. These investigations have been of two basic types, some involving objective measures of physiologic, aerodynamic, or acoustic features of the subjects' fluent speech signal, and others involving experiments performed in which listeners attempted to distinguish the fluency produced by stutterers from that generated by normal speakers. The body of literature pertaining to each of these two types of investigations is reviewed and interpreted. The interpretations offered are then developed in an effort to shed further light on both fluency and stuttering. Implications for further research, as well as for the evaluation, treatment, and post-therapy assessment of stutterers are drawn.     

Hemispheric asymmetries in faculty and student musicians and nonmusicians during melody recognition tasks

Current research has suggested that musical stimuli are processed in the right hemisphere except in musicians, in whom there is an increased involvement of the left hemisphere. The present study hypothesized that the more musical training persons receive, the more they will rely on an analytic/left-hemispheric processing strategy. The subjects were 10 faculty and 10 student musicians, and 10 faculty and 10 student nonmusicians. All subjects listened to a series of melodies (some recurring and some not) and excerpts (some actual and some not) in one ear and, after a rest, to a different series of melodies in the other ear. The task was to identify recurring vs. nonrecurring melodies and actual vs. nonactual excerpts. For student musicians, there was a right-ear/left-hemispheric advantage for melody recognition, while for student nonmusicians, the situation was the reverse. Neither faculty group showed any ear preference. There were no significant differences for excerpt recognition. Two possible explanations of the faculty performance were discussed in terms of physical maturation and a functionally more integrated hemispheric approach to the task.     

The Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment: A comment on Zimmerman's critique

This paper is a reply to an article in this journal by M. Zimmerman titled “The Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment: A Comment on Elardo and Bradley's Review”. We found Zimmerman's critique of our original review article (Developmental Review, 1981, 1, 113–145) to contain points which were well taken, and several which seemed pedantic. Specifically, we address his concerns about our discussion of the HOME scale's interrater reliability, test-retest stability, concurrent validity, and predictive validity; and we reply to his comments about the uses of the HOME scale for purposes of screening and matching environments.