Margaret H. Jones

Visual and auditory information processing in children and adults.

Children of three ages were compared with adults in a recognition experiment requiring continuous processing of information. The growth in precision for visually presented words is steeper than for auditorially presented words, largely because the former are harder for the first graders and, to a lesser extent, for the third graders. In adults, visual processing of information is at least as good as auditory. The use of receiver operating characteristic curves in describing the data permit greater precision in estimating the capacity of the individual subjects and are particularly useful since the errors of failure to recognize were different from ordinary errors of false recognition, and they occurred in large numbers.

Functional Evaluation of Rolfing in Cerebral Palsy

Rolfing is a technique which involves the use of pressure on areas of the body in which muscle tendons adhere to each other rather than sliding over one another in the normal way.

Redundancy in Children's Texts

The sequential constraints of pairs of letters were computed for a series of graded readers. Information in single letters is about the same for all texts. Redundancy decreases with increasing grade in a regular way, while mean word length increases. A third reader has about the same redundancy as simple adult text. The constraints in a first reader are considerable, whereas those in a fifth reader approach those in average adult text.

Teratogenic Effects of Herpes Simplex, Vaccinia, Influenza - A (NWS), and Distemper Virus Infections on Early Chick Embryos.∗†:

Summary Herpes simplex, vaccinia and influenza-A (XWS) viruses produced teratogenic and lethal effects in the early chick embryo. The primary teratogenic effects of all 3 viruses were micrencephaly and axial flexion, but minor characteristic differences could be detected in embryos infected with each of these agents. Distemper virus failed to produce any gross embryologic changes, although its injection led to the development of ulcerative lesions on the C - A membrane and death of the embryo.

Redundancy in children's free-reading choices

Summary Sequential constraints of pairs of letters were computed for free-reading choices of children at approximately first, third and fifth grade levels. When these were compared with the constraints found in First, Third and Fifth Readers, it was found that free-reading choices are less redundant than Readers. The child apparently prefers reading material which lies closer to the redundancy level of adult text. Investigation of three individual texts at the fifth level showed little effect of mere stylistic differences. Neither word length nor sentence length is a reliable index of the difficulty of a text. Sample size should be about 6000 words for computations of this sort.

Neutralization of Teratogenic and Lethal Effects of Influenza-A Virus in Chick Embryos.

Conclusions Specific immune serum will protect the 48-hour chick embryo from the teratogenic and lethal effects produced by in fection with influenza-A virus. Inasmuch as antiserum can neutralize these effects completely in vitro and to a lesser extent in ovo this study provides serological evidence to implicate the virus as the cause of the syndrome described.

Statistical Comparison of Two Series of Graded Readers

In the search for a useful method of quantifying the difficulty level of text intended for children, a redundancy measure derived from information theory was considered. Redundancy of letters in written English is a function of the relative frequency of each letter and of the constraints that operate in the language to produce combinations of letters with vastly different frequencies, including, of course, many of zero frequency (Shannon, 1951; Garner, 1962). When this measure of redundancy was applied to measurement of the sequential constraints in adult texts between pairs of letters, a very regular mathematical function describing per cent of redundancy resulted (Newman and Gerstman, 1952). Furthermore, these curves appeared to discriminate among texts of varying difficulty (Newman and Waugh, 1960). Application of these measures to childrens graded readers yielded similar smooth curves of growth of sequential constraint, and good discrimination of difficulty among readers at Levels 1, 2, 3, and 5 (Carterette and Jones, 1963). The redundancy found in childrens freereading choices was likewise related to difficulty of text but not to mere differences in style (Jones and Carterette, 1963). In view of the stability of these measures with a sample size of six thousand letters (Jones and Carterette, 1963), it is of some interest to apply them to a comparison of two series of graded readers. The important question for the educator is whether it is possible to design readers for a given level of difficulty in such a way that a level in one series is equivalent to the same level in another series and, especially, so that a regular progression of difficulty is achieved. Results are presented here for a new series of readers, and these are compared with data previously published for another series of readers and for free-reading choices.

Pilot Study of Reading Problems in Cerebral Palsied Adults

Twenty‐eight cerebral palsied adults were studied. The findings were as follows:

Behavioral Growth of Cerebral Palsied Children from Group Experience in a Confined Space

The effects of group experience in a small confined space were studied in 10 young cerebral palsied children over 4^ months. The children enjoyed the experience and improved in social awareness and peer interaction, and in social, verbal and motor activity. Periods of experience in a small confined space are recommended as part of the program for such children.

Automatic Operant Response Procedure (‘Play‐test’) for the Study of Auditory Perception of Neurologically Impaired Infants

Ten babies with cerebral palsy of varying types and degrees (age‐range 10 to 27 months) participated in an initial exploratory study designed to determine the effectiveness of an automated, two‐choice audio feedback system (‘Playtest’) for evaluation of the auditory perception and processing capabilities of neurologically impaired infants. The major components of the ‘Playtest’ are a master control unit and two toy‐like switches which are attached to the babys crib. By playing with the ‘toys’, the baby is able to listen to one of two pre‐recorded audio stimuli, music or a monotone hum. Frequency and duration of the babys self‐selected listening responses are automatically recorded on meters inside the control unit and provide a precise numerical record over an extended period of time.