No abstract

Therapeutic camping in a wilderness or similar natural environment has led to personal, social, emotional, and cognitive benefits for emotionally disturbed girls. While emotionally disturbed boys derive similar benefits, there appears to be some evidence for differential effects of therapeutic camping based on gender. Criticisms of past research include the lack of control groups, random assignment of subjects, valid and reliable measures, statistical analyses, and long-term follow-up studies. Suggestions for the future include: (1) the development and analysis of more therapeutic camping programs for girls in same-gender and mixed-gender groups, (2) increased use of true experimental or quasi-experimental designs, (3) more research into the generalizability of therapeutic camping benefits to other populations and non-wilderness settings, (4) systematic research into what aspects of camping are therapeutic, and (5) the development of community-based programs and services incorporating those aspects of the camping programs found to be therapeutic.Therapeutic camping for emotionally disturbed children and adolescents has existed for over 50 years. The goals of such programs are to foster normal behavior patterns, emotions, and attitudes through camping in wilderness or similar natural environments.

No abstract

Albino rats reared in a visually sparse environment were preexposed to stimuli wh ich varied in their degree of relevancy to the to·be-discriminated stimuli, an equilateral triangle and a circle. It was found that for early experience with stimuli to facilitate perceptual learning, the preexposed stimuli must be of the same general dass as the to-be-discrirninated stimuli. These findings suggested that the positive transfer effect which follows preexposure to stimuli results from identifying specific aspects of the stimuli rather than being due to a more general process of simply having had stimulus experience.

Summasy.-Albino rats reared in a visually sparse environment were preexposed to either both, one, or neither of the to-be-discriminated stimuli. Both groups which received early scimulus experience learned the discrimination task in significantly fewer trials than did the nonexposed control group, and the group which received early experience with both stimuli was superior to the group pre-exposed to only one of the to-be-discriminated stimuli. The results imply that greatest facilitation by early experience of later discrimination learning will occur if S is allowed to compare the to-be-discriminated stimuli in his rearing environment.