Purposes a semiotic model for analyzing messages of the cinematic medium in film and television, and demonstrates its applicability to the study of children's comprehension of these messages. Highlights include the effects of visual and temporal features on comprehension; film and photography; and cognitive-developmental factors in comprehension.…

A developmental study investigated the pictorial and linguistic main idea identification skills of 104 students in second, fifth, and eighth grades. In the pictorial task, the subjects studied a complete picture story and ranked the effectiveness of four separate main idea alternatives at capturing the meaning of the story. Following the same…

To measure how the complexity of a television image affects the viewer's ability to identify or recognize visual details within the image, two coders rated the form complexity of 30 public service announcements, basing their evaluation on the familiarity of the images in the announcements, the rate at which they presented new information, and the…

The effects of black and white and color illustrations on student achievement were studied to investigate the relationships between cognitive styles and instructional design. Field dependence (FD) and field independence (FI) were chosen as the cognitive style variables. Subjects were 85 freshman students in the Iowa State University Psychology…

This study examined the effects of instruction in aesthetic principles and technical skills on aesthetic and technical qualities of fourth and fifth graders' photographs. Results indicate children receiving technical and aesthetic instruction produced photographs rated as having improved more on aesthetic qualities than those by students receiving…

Differences in storage and rehearsal components of the phonological loop and visuo-spatial sketchpad were investigated in individuals with (n=19) and without (n=21) intellectual disability matched on memory span. Those with intellectual disability had specific difficulty in the rehearsal component of the phonological loop. Groups did not differ in…

Nine adults with Prader-Willi syndrome (PWS) and nine age- and IQ-matched adults with PWS completed standardized tests of long-term and short-term memory, visual and auditory processing, and reading and mathematics achievement. Contrary to previous findings, long-term memory in PWS subjects was strong relative to IQ and there was no evidence that…

Although color vision deficiency is a prevalent problem in childhood, little is known about the cognitive and social-emotional variables linked to this difficulty. A review of the literature revealed seven empirical articles exploring the psychological functioning of color-deficient children, with the results yielding contradictory findings. The…

In the study of perception during reading, the use of eye movement contingent control of the stimulus display has proved to be a useful research technique. With such a system, it is possible to experimentally manipulate, in real time, the characteristics of the stimulus display that is present on selected fixations as reading is in progress and to…

Visual fixations were recorded in newborn, 4-, and 8-week-old human infants as they scanned displays that varied in contour length, size, number, and a new metric, CVAL (based on Contour Variability, Amount and Location). One of the findings was that both contour length and CVAL separately accounted for approximatel1 95 of looking-duration…

Varied conditions under which children aged four to five years matched the area of a rectangle with a given width or height to that of a square. Subjects matched one dimension of the rectangle to one side of the square suggesting that area matches seemed to be based on a side-matching strategy. (Author/AS)

Investigates developmental changes in the accuracy of aimed movements made to an illuminated target lamp by children between the ages of 1.5 and 8 years. Shows accuracy decreased with decreasing availability of visual information and improved with age under all conditions. (HOD)

Summarizes an initial foray in tackling artificial intelligence problems using a connectionist approach. The task chosen is visual recognition of Origami objects, and the questions answered are how to construct a connectionist network to represent and recognize projected Origami line drawings and the advantages such an approach would have. (30…

Three studies explore the development of discrimination and memory for symmetry in preschoolers four to six years of age. Issues addressed include the young child's ability to discriminate and reproduce symmetry, and the effects of pattern orientation and complexity on the young child's symmetry discrimination and reproduction. Results indicate…

This study investigated whether second, third, and fourth graders could recognize microcomputer-generated color graphics displayed on monochromatic monitors. It was found that subjects were unable to discern critical features of a color graphic displayed on a monochromatic screen unless it was designed to enhance figure/ground separation.…