diff --git a/activesupport/lib/active_support/core_ext/string/iterators.rb b/activesupport/lib/active_support/core_ext/string/iterators.rb
index 472de7bc244b81572f0697ce3c1c15dd25ac78a9..2f8aa840242cabcb0d3ea1270824299443131d0f 100644
--- a/activesupport/lib/active_support/core_ext/string/iterators.rb
+++ b/activesupport/lib/active_support/core_ext/string/iterators.rb
@@ -1,11 +1,10 @@
 unless '1.9'.respond_to?(:each_char)
-  autoload :StringScanner, 'strscan' unless defined? :StringScanner
-
   class String
     # Yields a single-character string for each character in the string.
     # When $KCODE = 'UTF8', multi-byte characters are yielded appropriately.
     def each_char
-      scanner, char = StringScanner.new(self), /./mu
+      require 'strscan' unless defined? ::StringScanner
+      scanner, char = ::StringScanner.new(self), /./mu
       while c = scanner.scan(char)
         yield c
       end
diff --git a/activesupport/lib/active_support/json/decoding.rb b/activesupport/lib/active_support/json/decoding.rb
index c66500aa9c5e1ca6c10d91382f7a273281f3328c..70e9f40fc7d6917944751d8bf841ee62999852a0 100644
--- a/activesupport/lib/active_support/json/decoding.rb
+++ b/activesupport/lib/active_support/json/decoding.rb
@@ -1,6 +1,3 @@
-autoload :YAML, 'yaml' unless defined? YAML
-autoload :StringScanner, 'strscan' unless defined? StringScanner
-
 require 'active_support/core_ext/string/starts_ends_with'
 
 module ActiveSupport
@@ -22,7 +19,8 @@ def decode(json)
 
         # Ensure that ":" and "," are always followed by a space
         def convert_json_to_yaml(json) #:nodoc:
-          scanner, quoting, marks, pos, times = StringScanner.new(json), false, [], nil, []
+          require 'strscan' unless defined? ::StringScanner
+          scanner, quoting, marks, pos, times = ::StringScanner.new(json), false, [], nil, []
           while scanner.scan_until(/(\\['"]|['":,\\]|\\.)/)
             case char = scanner[1]
             when '"', "'"
diff --git a/activesupport/test/json/decoding_test.rb b/activesupport/test/json/decoding_test.rb
index 8fe40557d677e4dc63d0df05cc76222d0e56749d..7d8a07654da2c85ebe40bfa31b87e7764489bfb8 100644
--- a/activesupport/test/json/decoding_test.rb
+++ b/activesupport/test/json/decoding_test.rb
@@ -1,7 +1,7 @@
 # encoding: UTF-8
 require 'abstract_unit'
 
-class TestJSONDecoding < Test::Unit::TestCase
+class TestJSONDecoding < ActiveSupport::TestCase
   TESTS = {
     %q({"returnTo":{"\/categories":"\/"}})        => {"returnTo" => {"/categories" => "/"}},
     %q({returnTo:{"\/categories":"\/"}})          => {"returnTo" => {"/categories" => "/"}},
@@ -36,7 +36,7 @@ class TestJSONDecoding < Test::Unit::TestCase
   }
   
   TESTS.each do |json, expected|
-    define_method :"test_json_decoding_#{json}" do
+    test "json decodes #{json}" do
       assert_nothing_raised do
         assert_equal expected, ActiveSupport::JSON.decode(json)
       end