Del Giacco Art Therapy is a cognitive art therapy process that focuses on stimulating the mental sensory systems and working to stabilize the nervous system and create new neural connections in the brain. This system was created by Maureen Del Giacco, Phd. after recovering from her own traumatic brain injury and is based on extensive research of…

Human cognition is founded, in part, on four systems for representing objects, actions, number, and space. It may be based, as well, on a fifth system for representing social partners. Each system has deep roots in human phylogeny and ontogeny, and it guides and shapes the mental lives of adults. Converging research on human infants, non-human…

Using the gaze-contingent boundary paradigm with the boundary placed after word n, the experiment manipulated preview of word n + 2 for fixations on word n. There was no preview benefit for 1st-pass reading on word n + 2, replicating the results of K. Rayner, B. J. Juhasz, and S. J. Brown (2007), but there was a preview benefit on the 3-letter…

A revised concept of multimodality, multisensory instruction which minimizes the visual modality is suggested to deal primarily with the severe spelling difficulties of the dyslexic and of others with a similar language problem. (Author/SW)

Discusses using photographs as a teaching method for sociology students. States that photographs have often been considered an art related subject rather than a sociology medium. Focuses on C. Wright Mills's use of Depression era photographs, a teaching method referred to as 'Mills's Imagination.' (KDR)

Describes a perceptual illusion, the Janus mask, for use in introductory psychology demonstrations. Suggests using a motor or videotaped image to rotate the mask, giving the impression that the mask is following a moving observer or oscillating. Recommends the illusion to show that perception is usefully conceptualized as hypothesis testing. (DK)

Recent findings raised evidence that in early-onset left temporal lobe epilepsy, women show greater functional plasticity for verbal memory than men. In particular, women with lesion- or epilepsy-driven atypical language dominance show an advantage over men. The question asked in this study was whether there is evidence of sex- and language…

Many studies of eye tracking or event-related brain potentials (ERPs) in subjects with Pervasive Developmental Disorder (PDD) have yielded inconsistent results on attentional processing. However, recent studies have indicated that there are specific abnormalities in early processing that are probably related to perception. ERP amplitudes in…

Screeners at airport security checkpoints perform an important categorization task in which they search for threat items in complex x-ray images. But little is known about how the processes of categorization stand up to visual complexity. The authors filled this research gap with screening tasks in which participants searched for members of target…

The critical examination of the film "American Beauty" reveals characteristics illustrative of the form of culture coextensive with modern technological societies. This form of culture creates an imbalance favoring the aesthetical over the ethical dimensions of human orientation. Absorption into the aesthetical dimension of the electronic or…

During locomotion, retinal flow, gaze angle, and vestibular information can contribute to one's perception of self-motion. Their respective roles were investigated during active steering: Retinal flow and gaze angle were biased by altering the visual information during computer-simulated locomotion, and vestibular information was controlled…

The term "visual representation" is used purposefully to include a wide range of visual meaning-making devices and symbols. Although visual representations are considered important as meaning-making devices across theoretical constructs, little has been done to examine their role in the assessment and evaluation of learning in all areas of the…

Some potential contributions of invariants, heuristics, and exemplars to the perception of dynamic properties in the colliding balls task were explored. On each trial, an observer is asked to determine the heavier of 2 colliding balls. The invariant approach assumes that people can learn to detect complex visual patterns that reliably specify…

Failure to attain handwriting competency during the school-age years often has far-reaching negative effects on both academic success and self-esteem. This complex occupational task has many underlying component skills that may interfere with handwriting performance. Fine motor control, bilateral and visual-motor integration, motor planning,…

Joseph Coencas shows scenes from films to help special education students improve their visual and auditory skills, build confidence in their abilities to talk about and analyze the components of a narrative, and feel comfortable engaging in class discussion and writing. He also encourages students to pursue their interests in subjects they have…