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Biomedical subjects

H H Spitz

Publications and source records attributed to H H Spitz.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1988

Inverse relationship between the WISC-R/WAIS-R score disparity and IQ level in the lower range of intelligence.

The WISC-R and WAIS-R Full Scale IQs of nine groups of subjects (two from the present study and seven from previously published studies) that had mean WISC-R IQs ranging from 45 to 81 were compared. The WAIS-R produced higher IQs than did the WISC-R, and this disparity increased as WISC-R IQ decreased. A regression equation for this function was given. The progressive disparity was due in large part to differences in raw score to scaled score conversions compounded by differences in tabled values for converting scaled scores to IQs.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1986

Disparities in mentally retarded persons' IQs derived from different intelligence tests.

For mildly and moderately mentally retarded individuals, the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale--Revised measures at about the same level as the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale, and, consequently, it also produces much higher IQs than do the Wechsler children's scales or the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale, Form L-M, despite high intertest correlations. This unsatisfactory state of affairs is due primarily to inadequate standardization sampling, particularly in the lower range of intelligence. Rather than abandon the IQ, corrective action should be taken.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1985

Influence of planning time and first-move strategy on Tower of Hanoi problem-solving performance of mentally retarded young adults and nonretarded children.

Because the ability to plan ahead is essential for successful solution of transformation problems, it is reasonable to assume that planning time will be positively related to performance. In two experiments using a computer-interfaced Tower of Hanoi problem, however, the planning time of retarded young adults was, on the average, as long as or longer than the planning time of higher performing nonretarded children. In neither group was there a reliable correlation between planning time and performance. There were group differences in preferred strategies, which we speculated were associated with a deeper search capacity available to the nonretarded children. What takes place during planning time is a more relevant source of group and individual differences than is the duration of planning time.

Adult↗
PubMed1985

Maintenance and transfer of training by mentally retarded young adults on the Tower of Hanoi problem.

The training, maintenance, and transfer performance of mildly and moderately mentally retarded young adults on the Tower of Hanoi problem was measured in two separate experiments. Results indicated that the training method was effective to the extent that performance on trained problems was improved and these performance gains were maintained over periods of 9 and 13 weeks. Generalization to two transfer tasks was very limited, however.

Adult↗
PubMed1979

Measuring the use of a principle by retarded adolescents and nonretarded children on a Redundancy Series Test.

A series test composed of geometric figures placed in redundant patterns was designed to measure the ability of retarded adolescents to use of principle. It was administered to institutionalized and noninstitutionalized retarded adolescents and to nonretarded children from nursery school through fourth grade. Results revealed that four of the items accounted for most of the errors and that these four critical items were particularly sensitive to an inadequate scanning strategy. The retarded groups showed a mental age lag at least 1 year, 6 months and did not perform above chance on the critical items.

Child↗
PubMed1979

Effect of peer interaction on the problem-solving behavior of mentally retarded youths.

Educable mentally retarded young adults were given a one-bit logic problem (Experiment 1) or a test of conservation (Experiment 2) and classified as either low or high performers. In a second session the low performers were paired with high performers, and the dyads were required to agree on the solution to the problems presented. A control group of low performers was simply tested individually in a second session. One month later all the low performers were retested on the same logic problems or on an alternate form of the conservation test. No significant differences were observed in Experiment 1. In Experiment 2, the conservation scores of subjects who participated in the peer interaction were higher than those of controls on the posttest; however, based on responses to the lie item, we concluded that the experimental subjects had simply learned to respond "same" and to parrot a verbal statement. No such mimicking was possible in the logic problem. Results suggest that peer interaction is not a particularly effective method for enhancing the problem-solving ability of mentally retarded individuals.

Adult↗
PubMed1978

Reflection-impulsivity in retarded adolescents and nonretarded children of equal MA.

Educable mentally retarded (EMR) adolescents and nonretarded children of equal MA were given the preschool and elementary forms of the Matching Familiar Figures Test to assess reflection-impulsivity. We found that the EMR adolescents did not differ significantly in accuracy and had somewhat longer response latencies than did the nonretarded children. In view of these results, it is unlikely that impulsivity contributed to the previously reported performance decrement displayed by retarded individuals on problem-solving tasks.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1978

Porteus Maze Test performance of retarded young adults and nonretarded children.

Performances of retarded young adults on the Porteus Maze Test were compared with those of first- through fourth-grade nonretarded children. The retarded subjects, approximately matched on MA with the fourth-grade group, performed at the level of the first graders and were reliably poorer than the third and fourth graders. This MA lag of at least 2 years is consistent with the MA lag previously found on strategic games and puzzles. The retarded and first-grade groups spent more time completing mazes than did the other groups.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1977

Performance of retarded adolescents and nonretarded children on the Tower of Hanoi Problem.

Groups of retarded adolescents and nonretarded children, varying in MA were presented with 2-disk and 3-disk Tower of Hanoi puzzles, solutions to which require a certain amount of logical foresight. Nonretarded 8- to 11-year-old children performed at close to ceiling on the 2-disk task but had difficulty with the 3-disk task. Retarded groups with MAs ranging from 8 to 11 years performed no differently than nonretarded 6- and 7-year-old children. They had some difficulty on the 2-disk task, and very few reached criterion on the 3-risk task. They tended to preseverate in their errors and frequently resorted to game-rule viole perform many years below MA expectations on tasks requiring foresight and logic.

Achievement↗
PubMed1976

Short-term retention in retarded adolescents as a function of load, delay, and interpolated activity.

The present study investigated certain variables influencing the short-term retention of retarded adolescents. Forty trainable and 40 educable retarded adolescents were shown slides containing arrays of 2, 3, 4, or 5 chromatic pictures to be recalled after varying periods (0, 18, 36, and 140 sec) of filled or unfilled activity. Results indicated that recall in the unfilled condition remained relatively stable over time, while in the filled condition recall was deleteriously affected by a distracter task (p less than .01). No significant retention slope differences were observed between the two IQ groups. As is typically found with nonretarded adults, the curve of forgetting for the retarded individuals described a negatively accelerated function. With increasing proactive interference there were increasing decrements in short-term recall, with neither IQ group differing from the other. It was suggested that both decay and interference contribute to the short-term forgetting of retarded people.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1976

Inference of word meaning from syntax structure by normal children and retarded adolescents.

Children from five to 12 years of age (N = 136 boys and girls) and institutionalized retarded adolescents (N = 30 boys and girls) were given a task developed by Brown to test ability to infer nonsense word meanings from syntactic clues. Response accuracy for the normal children was consistently low from five years up to eight years of age, after which it increased steeply with increasing age. However, accuracy levels were markedly below those reported by Brown and raise questions concerning his original finding that young children are largely successful in using the grammatical context of new words to guess their meaning. Performance of the retarded adolescents did not parallel that of the nonretarded children, and on two of the three parts of speech their performance fell below mental age expectations, a result attributed to their deficient generalization ability.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1976

An assessment of hypothesis testing in mentally retarded adolescents.

Groups of educable and trainable institutionalised retarded adolescents were tested on a discrimination learning problem with a modified blank trials procedure in an attempt to measure their hierarchy of hypotheses. Results indicated that the hierarchy and size of initial hypothesis sets varied as a function of degree of retardation. Trainable retarded subjects had fewer hypotheses, and initially chose position hypotheses predominantly. Under discriminate reinforcement, most of these were readily switched to stimulus dimension hypotheses, which they retained during additional non-discriminate (100 per cent) reinforcement trials. Educable retarded subjects predominantly chose stimulus dimension hypotheses initially, and most of these switched to position hypotheses during either discriminate or non-discriminate reinforcement trials.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1975

Effects of temporal grouping and redundancy level on the paired-associate learning of retarded adolescents and nonretarded children.

Institutionalized adolescents and nonretarded third-grade children were presented with sets of paired associates which differed in redundancy level and temporal grouping. Redundancy level (33 and 50 percent) was embedded in a list of paired associates by varying the number of repetitions in the response terms. The paired associates were presented temporally in blocks of twos (33 percent) or threes (50 percent). One-half of the subjects received the paired associates highly organized; i.e., all response terms of a temporal block were the same. During testing, all stimulus terms were presented simultaneously for the free-ordered recall of the response terms. For both groups, performance was superior following the more highly organized (congruent) presentation, with the performance of the nonretarded subjects exceeding that of the retarded adolescents. Comparisons were made with previous studies in this series.

Adolescent↗