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With the increased use of technology in education, the use of media dissemination devices such as video tape players, film strip projectors, tape recorders, etc., are often employed by the teacher in the presentation of information. The purpose of this study was to compare the learning of one particular lesson by use of the audio medium versus the printed medium. Seventy-five second grade children were pretested, presented with one of the two learning stimuli, and posttested twice to determine differential learning and/or retention. Statistical analysis was performed on the entire sample and subdivided by sex and socio-economic level. Significant indications were obtained that the auditory stimulus was superior to the written stimulus in a learning situation.

Summary.-It was hypothesized that the probabiliry of making a correct response at the choice point of a simple T-maze is increased when goal-box conditions serve to heighten the kind and degree of effector activity demanded in making that response. 60 albino rats were divided equally among each of 5 experimental conditions reflecting differences in effector activity at the goal-box. Predictions suggested that occurrence of the correct response at the choice-point decreases with decreasing amounts of kinesthetic activity generated at the goal-box. The results generally support the contention that varied kinesthetic-interoceptive stimulation from S's own body produces differential learning. Spence (1940) suggested that learning in instrumental reward sequences involves classical conditioning of che goal response to scimulus cues throughout the response chain. The theory (Spence, Bergmann, & Lippitt, 1950) assumes that stimulus cues in the goal-box and from the alley just preceding the goal-box become conditioned to the goal response, R,. Through generalization, scirnulus cues at an earlier point are also assumed to acquire che capacity to elicit R,. The interoceptive stimulus cues, s,, produced by the fractional conditioned response, r,, also become part of the stimulus complex and become conditioned co and, thus, become determiners of, the instrumental locomotor responses. Tolman (1932) predicted that, if rats were shocked in a goal-box where they had been fed a number of times after making a black-white discriminacion, they would not run toward the goal when again placed in the starring position. Even without the full experience of running through the maze and then being shocked, Tolman held that the racs should have the expeccacion of "shock-food box" and should show some signs of this expectation. No such signs were noted, each of the four rats running to the food box exactly as he had before the shock experience. Miller (1935) chen arranged several learning situations in which he predicted that the behavior expected by Tolman would occur. These situations employed goal-boxes which forced the rat into distinctive L-shaped body positions while eacing or drinking. After learning to run a straight-away co one of chese angled reward devices, half of the animals were placed in the goal-boxes, not now attached to the runway, and shocked while eating. The other animals were placed in devices also unattached b~t angled in the opposite direction from that used in

First-, third-, fifth-, and seventh-grade children learned a paired-associate list of seven pairs of familiar pictures to a criterion of one perfect trial, followed by modified-free recall. First and third graders required significantly more acquisition trials than fifth and seventh graders. Various component analyses, including stage analyses, were conducted to isolate the reasons for the differential learning rates. Both S-R and R-S recall were demonstrated to be invariant across all grade levels. Associative symmetry was demonstrated for all grade levels using both the conventional statistical analysis and a conditional probability analysis.

An experiment requiring the learning of “new” (nonsense) words replacing the words “eager” and “easy” in the linguistic structure “John is eager/easy to please” showed that only adults and higher-IQ children could perform better than chance on the new words. Contrary to prediction, children showed no differential learning ability on two types of words to be learned. However, an analysis of the strategies used gave evidence of a language-specific learning ability in children but not in adults. It is proposed that the inability of lower-IQ children to learn the words, as well as the lack of differential learning of the two types by higher-IQ children, was due to the nature of the task-being more like that used in concept formation experiments than like natural language.

In a review of selected research, the perceptual skills of vision and audition were discussed in terms of their interrelations and as each influences the acquisition of academic skills, especially that of reading. The possibility of a modality concept in which children have differential learning strengths at the perceptual level was considered. Such a concept, if valid, could lead to the teaching of early academic skills through differential procedures emphasizing the identified perceptual strengths. The area of perceptual influences in early school behavior is a ripe one for study, and several questions are raised for further examination by the educational researcher or school psychologist.

Differential learning of operant behavior under non-drug and amphetamine states was explained with a “drug-behavior-reinforcement interaction” process. When a drug affects the relationship between ongoing behavior and existing reinforcement contingencies, the sets of behavioral patterns subjected to the process of reinforcement or non-reinforcement under a drug may differ from the patterns under non-drug conditions. If, following sufficient training, the drug conditions are then changed, persistence of these behavioral patterns may result in a difference from those patterns produced if acquisition occurs solely under non-drug conditions. To investigate this process, groups of rats were given varying amounts of non-drug acquisition training on a response-duration differentiation task before being given extended training under 0.75 mg/kg d-amphetamine. All groups were then tested under non-drug conditions. Amphetamine significantly enhanced performance, and this enhancement transferred to subsequent non-drug conditions. However, if non-drug training occurred before drug training, this enhancement was greatly attenuated. Furthermore, only those behavioral components under which amphetamine led to an increase in reinforcement rate showed enhancement in the non-drug state. The results, which supported the present position, were discussed in relation to a “stimulus generalization decrement” explanation of differential learning under amphetamine.

Ss recalled CCC trigrams differing in incentive value, temporal position of incentive cue, and length of retention interval. Recall varied as a function of incentive and retention interval, but was unrelated to cue position. Additional evidence suggested that differential learning and covert rehearsal may mediate the facilitative effects of incentive.

Three groups of second grade children learned a concept with different types of verbal labels, while a fourth group learned the concept with no verbal label. Predictably, the Ss learned more rapidly with verbal labels than without. However, labels from different linguistic form classes produced differential learning rates. Further investigation of this finding may provide information relevant to important questions in the area of concept learning.

Simple and differentially conditioned responses of the middle ear muscles to visual stimuli were produced in awake cats with electrodes implanted chronically on the round windows. Muscle contractions were observed indirectly through their effects on the cochlear microphonic. These CRs are easily produced and have very short latencies (80 msec.) under optimal conditions. Somewhat longer minimal latencies (150 msec.) were measured in the differential learning situation. The stapedius was shown to play the dominant role in those conditioning experiments where only one of the two middle ear muscles was left intact.