Bilingual reading can require more than knowing two languages. Learners must acquire also the writing conventions of their second language, which can differ in its deep mapping principles (writing system) and its visual configurations (script). We review ERP (event-related potential) and fMRI studies of both Chinese-English bilingualism and…

Visual perception may be a developmental prerequisite to some types of social understanding. The ability to perceive social information given visual motion appears to develop early. However, children with autism have profound deficits in social cognitive function and may fail to see social motion in the same way that typically developing children…

How long does it take to form a durable representation in visual working memory? Several theorists have proposed that this consolidation process is very slow. Here, we measured the time course of consolidation. Observers performed a change-detection task for colored squares, and shortly after the presentation of the first array, pattern masks were…

Case reports and sensory inventories suggest that autism involves sensory processing anomalies. Behavioral tests indicate impaired motion and normal form perception in autism. The present study used first-person accounts to investigate perceptual anomalies and related subjective to psychophysical measures. Nine high-functioning children with…

Evidence on the poorer spatial visualization ability in various Negro populations compared to the White populations and on the direction and magnitude of sex differences in spatial ability relative to other abilities suggests the genetic hypothesis that spatial ability is enhanced by a sex-linked recessive gene and that, since the 20-30 percent…

Visual orientation toward a peripheral stimulus by newborns and 7-week-old infants was examined with both a central stimulus present and absent. General conclusion is that, contrary to previous assessments, the neonate appears to exercise internal control over his sampling of the stimulus array rather than being passively captured by it.…

Describes an experiment measuring response latency which required subjects to make a word-nonword decision in response to a visually presented item. (AM)

Previous studies have found that an object can be categorized faster at a basic level (hammer) than at either a subordinate (club hammer) or a superordinate level (tool). While some attribute this result to basic categories having more distinctive attributes, other factors might cause this result. For example, basic categories routinely have…

THE DISCRIMINATION OF PICTURES AND PICTURE ELEMENTS AMONG 5TH-, 8TH-, AND 11TH-GRADERS WAS STUDIED (1) TO DETERMINE THE DIFFERENCES IN INTERPRETATION OF SPECIFIC STATIC VISUAL STIMULI WHEN PRESENTED THROUGH TWO TYPES OF ILLUSTRATIONS (PHOTOGRAPHS AND OUTLINE DRAWINGS OF THE SAME SCENES) AND (2) TO GAIN INSIGHT INTO VARIATION IN THE INTERPRETATION…

RECENT RESEARCH ON THE DISCRIMINATION PROCESS INDICATES THAT ERRORLESS LEARNING CAN OCCUR IF STIMULI ARE CAREFULLY PROGRAMED SO THAT THEY ARE DISSIMILAR AND GRADUALLY BECOME MORE SIMILAR AS TRAINING PROCEEDS. TO ASSESS THIS APPROACH IN TEACHING THE LOWER- CASE LETTER B AND D WITH KINDERGARTEN SUBJECTS, TWO SETS OF STIMILI CONSTITUTED THE FIRST…

Pioneering research has shown that infants are capable of perceptual discrimination and has provided some indication of the nature of the discrimination; that is, what stimuli are differentiable. Studies have demonstrated that significant effects exist, in stimulus-pair comparisons, for age of infant, speed of movement of stimulus during…

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…

Two experiments were conducted with children to determine the units of word perception used in recognizing isolated words. In the first experiment, kindergarten children practiced visually discriminating whole words (big, pig, dig), single letters (b, p, d), or geometric forms (triangle, circle, square) before learning to read three words (big,…

An experiment using an analysis of the distinctive features of lower case letters of the English alphabet to predict high- and low-confusible alternates for each letter was reported. Ten disadvantaged 5-year-old Negro children served as their own controls, circling in booklets the letters seen after a 1-second presentation by memory drum. The…

Experimental conditions consisting of visual experience, visual plus motor training, visual plus verbal-orienting instruction, visual plus motor plus verbal, and a control group were used to study young children's concept development. Assessment was based on discriminating and remembering positive concept instances and classifying concept…