Relative effectiveness of various letter discrimination procedures in directionality pretraining

Two investigations were conducted to provide information relevant to programming basic reading skills for retarded individuals. Both experiments utilized various procedures to teach subjects to discriminate between the letters b and d. The role of feedback and task format conditions was investigated in Experiment 1. Results indicated that two-choice discrimination learning was significantly more difficult than either oddity or matching-to-sample conditions. In Experiment 2 the effects of problem type and sample reduncancy were examined. Analyses indicated that simultaneous matching-to-sample procedures were significantly easier than successive matching-to-sample procedures. Performance with a delayed matching-to-sample transfer task did not reflect differential effects of training in either study.

Use of oral mannitol in the oedematous patient

Oral mannitol 200 g. was given on 24 occasions to patients with intractable oedema (cardiac, renal, or hepatic) and produced a mean weight loss of 3 kg. The procedure was found to be a safe, rapid, and effective method of treating oedema, and it should be used when diuretic therapy proves ineffective, particularly in the presence of hyponatraemia.

Effect of ethanol on magnesium excretion

The effect of ethanol on magnesium excretion was studied in three normal subjects. It was found that the ingestion of 2 ml ethanol/kg body weight produced a marked immediate increase in urinary magnesium excretion, but there was no significant effect on overall magnesium balance when this amount was taken daily for eight days.