To act and think, children and adults are continually required to ignore irrelevant visual information to focus on task-relevant items. As real-world visual information is organized into structures, we designed a feature visual search task containing 3-level hierarchical stimuli (i.e., local shapes that constituted intermediate shapes that formed…

Why has large-scale standardised testing attracted such a bad press? Why has pedagogic benefit to be derived from test results been downplayed? The paper investigates this question by first surveying the pros and cons of testing in the literature, and goes on to examine educators' responses to standardised, large-scale tests in a sample of low…

Male school children of three age levels were tested on a 2-choice visual discrimination task that varied in spatial continguity of stimulus, response, and reward. Separation of stimulus from response and reward was found to retard learning. (WY)

The role of perceptual discrimination in the development of the ability to selectively process information was investigated. Using an incidental learning paradigm, the discriminability between relevant and irrelevant stimuli was experimentally varied in two ways: (1) contiguity versus non-contiguity in spatial arrangements and (2) alternating…

This study established a controlled instructional procedure for visual concept learning in a school setting and investigated the possibility that an ability trait difference could affect visual learning of the concept. A total of 84 high visualizers and 84 low visualizers were selected from 629 fourth grade children according to their scores on…

Reports the results of a study of 7- to 11-year-old boys (n=100) designed to explore the use of visual and auditory information in learning to spell. Results showed that only with 10- and 11-year-olds did visual information produce better results than auditory presentation alone. (JDH)

This abbreviated form of the report of Florida's Statewide Assessment Program summarizes the key results and recommendations of the State's performance on the 1971-72 assessment of selected reading-related skills in grades 2 and 4. Topics discussed are: (1) why test? (2) what is statewide assessment? (3) what do 1971-72 assessment results show?…

The third section of a four-art technical report on Florida's Statewide Assessment Program provides statewide results of tests of reading-related skills in grades 2 and 4 and recommendations based on the results. A description of the reading-related skills is provided in Chapter 1, which covers assessment of reading skills, organization of…