It has been hypothesised that autism is an extreme version of the male brain, caused by high levels of prenatal testosterone (Baron-Cohen 1999). To test this proposal, associations were assessed between three visuo-spatial tasks and prenatal testosterone, indexed in second-to-fourth digit length ratios (2D:4D). The study included children with…

The cognitive underpinnings of arithmetic calculation in children are noted to involve working memory; however, cognitive processes related to arithmetic calculation and working memory suggest that this relationship is more complex than stated previously. The purpose of this investigation was to examine the relative contributions of processing…

Purpose: To examine age-related differences in auditory speech recognition and visual text recognition performance for parallel sets of stimulus materials in the auditory and visual modalities. In addition, the effects of variation in rate of presentation of stimuli in each modality were investigated in each age group. Method: A mixed-model design…

Applying optimal stimulation theory, the present study explored the development of sustained attention as a dynamic process. It examined the interaction of modality and temperament over time in children and adults. Second-grade children and college-aged adults performed auditory and visual vigilance tasks. Using the Carey temperament…

This is the fifth in a series of technical research reports by Harvard Project Zero which study artistic creation and comprehension as a means toward better art education. The three papers in this report all concern the bearing of projective geometry on the perceptual processes by which pictures are "read" for spatial information. The…

Students and teachers experience the world primarily through visual, kinesthetic, or auditory representational systems. If teachers are aware of their own favored system and those of their students, classroom communication will improve. Neurolinguistic programing can help teachers become more effective communicators. (PP)

The battery of perceptual and perceptual-motor tests (including one fine and two gross perceptual-motor tasks, and one visual and two auditory perceptual tasks) were useful for prediction of cognitive performance one year later at kindergarten age. However, cognitive achievement in first grade, and even more so in second grade, was best predicted…

Two experiments were conducted with 80 college students to examine factors associated with the crossmodal facilitation of learning Braille symbols when the visual modality is utilized. In Experiment 1 subjects using the haptic mode were informed of both the structure of the braille cell and the range of dot numerosity of the symbols to be…

The viewer's perception of television pictures is different from the perception of pictures generated by other visual media. The research findings on the subject reveal that there are four major areas under which the study of television picture perception can be grouped. The "light through" as opposed to the "light on" theory…

This article is reprinted from "Seven Magazine, a student publication of the University of North Iowa.

THE CHANGING ROLES OF THREE VISUAL-SPATIAL ABILITIES (SPATIAL ORIENTATION, VISUALIZATION, AND PERCEPTUAL SPEED) IN THE PERFORMANCE OF GROSS MOTOR SKILLS AT SUCCESSIVE STAGES DURING THE LEARNING PERIOD WERE STUDIED. THE SUBJECTS CONSISTED OF 48 WOMEN, AGES 17 TO 24, WHO WERE EQUALLY ASSIGNED TO EITHER OF TWO SECTIONS AND SUBDIVIDED INTO THREE…

To discover if slides of portrait paintings could be used in training students to be more visually perceptive and consequently to increase specificity in their descriptive writing, pairs of classes (one control, one experimental--totaling 148 sophomore students) of three high school teachers were exposed to the principle of specificity through…

Students were classed as field dependent or field independent using Witkin's Rod and Frame and the Embedded Figures Test. In addition, each of the 269 grade 8 subjects performed Uznadze's set tasks. The number of trials required for excitation and extinction in the haptic and visual modality were noted. The field-dependent-independent groups,…

This experiment asked whether infants at 5 months perceived an invariant over four types of rigid motion (perspective transformations), and thereby differentiated rigid motion from deformation. Four perspective transformations of a sponge rubber object (rotation around the vertical axis, rotation around the horizontal axis, rotation in the frontal…

Simultaneous and successive visual and tactual shape discrimination were examined in this study which replicated with modifications an earlier study. When ceiling effects were precluded, data support the conclusion that children often find it more difficult to discriminate shapes by touch than by vision. (GO)