Some developmental implications of a disturbance in responding to complex environmental stimuli.

From infancy, normally developing children exhibit a preference for certain stimuli, such as those that contain a particular amount of complexity. As children increase in age, they become more proficient in responding to more complex multicomponent instructional stimuli. In contrast, the literature abounds with examples of children with developmental delays and handicaps who exhibit varying degrees of a disturbance in responding to complex stimuli, and research and theory suggest that the presence of a disturbance in responding to complex multicomponent stimuli may deleteriously influence their development. Based on recent research, it appears that the effects of this disturbance may be altered by teaching such children a generalized set to respond to complex multicomponent stimuli.