Examines and rejects two traditional assumptions about fluent reading: that identification of letters is necessary to identify words; and that identification of words is necessary to comprehend. Proposes that identification and comprehension are two separate tasks and that a reader comprehends because he reads for meaning in the first place. (MB)

Describes a reading and listening study aid called a map" which, in addition to synthesizing information, displays it in pictorial form with special markings for main and supporting ideas. (MS)

Among the findings were that there was no significant difference in performance between Down's syndrome, other mentally handicapped, and normal Ss matched for mental age, when extraneous developmental factors were eliminated; and that there was no relationship between mental age and visual perception in any group. (DLS)

In order to determine whether mistakes committed by younger children are the result of retention mistakes rather than faulty perceptual encoding, twenty children (6, 8, 10, and 12 years old) reconstructed two visual patterns from immediate memory, while twenty other children (5 and 6 years old) reconstructed the identical patterns by direct…

The ability to recall correctly ordered information was examined using two auditory tasks (narrative recall and digit span) and a nonverbal, visual task, with 47 individuals with Down's syndrome (ages 5 to 20) and 47 mentally aged-matched children. Although Down's syndrome subjects recalled less information than controls, no differences in the…

Investigated a prior classification of Wechsler Memory Scale-Revised (WMS-R) subtests into Verbal and Visual categories. Findings from 45 college students found that memory test performance correlated significantly with performance on subtests of Form II of Luria-Nebraska Neuropsychological Battery that measures substrates of particular memory…

A study compared 11 Italian children (ages 7-11) with nonverbal learning disabilities (NVLD) to 49 controls on four tasks requiring visuospatial working memory and visual imagery. Results found the children with NVLD showed deficits in the use of visuospatial working memory and visual imagery. (Author/CR)

Studied whether patterns of developmental progression in reality monitoring were present in visual and auditory modalities and the role of cross-modal imagery in reality-monitoring tasks. Found scores revealed evidence of developmental progression in both auditory and visual source-monitoring tasks, but no effect of cross-modal imagery. (Author)

Children with Specific language Impairment (SLI) have problems with verbal memory, particularly with tasks that have more processing demands. They also have slower speeds of responding for some tasks. To identify the extent to which young children with SLI would differ in performance from age-matched non-impaired children on a set of spatio-visual…

Attention and working memory limitations set strict limits on visual representations, yet researchers have little appreciation of how these limits constrain the acquisition of information in ongoing visually guided behavior. Subjects performed a brick sorting task in a virtual environment. A change was made to 1 of the features of the brick being…

The Barnes maze is a spatial memory task that requires subjects to learn the position of a hole that can be used to escape the brightly lit, open surface of the maze. Two experiments assessed the relative importance of spatial (extra-maze) versus proximal visible cues in solving the maze. In Experiment 1, four groups of mice were trained either…

In order to explain the cognitive and cerebral mechanisms responsible for the visuospatial peak in autism, and to document its specificity to this condition, a group of eight high-functioning individuals with autism and a visuospatial peak (HFA-P) performed a modified block-design task (BDT; subtest from Wechsler scales) at various levels of…

Previous literature on children's visual pattern perception has suggested that preschool children may process hierarchical forms in a manner different from that of older children and adults. Data from some studies suggested that children are holistic processors of pattern information, while other studies characterized children as piecemeal…