Explores the possibility that measurable individual differences in hypnotic susceptibility or the ability to attend selectively to informational cues may account for a portion of the variability found in several types of geometrical visual illusions. (Author/RK)

Older individuals have been reported to use imagery mediation less in remembering verbal material. To determine whether this is due to decrease in the speed with which verbal stimuli are recoded into pictorial representations, the reaction time of 12 old (63-78) and 12 young (17-25) subjects for matching verbal descriptions to geometric shapes was…

Investigated with 64 upper middle class first-grade children of normal intelligence and visual perception was the construct validity of the trait of visual figure-ground perception. (Author/DB)

Evaluated with 20 disabled readers (6-10 years old) was the relationship between the Jordan Left-Right Reversal Test and word discrimination abilities. (DB)

Two experiments are described which are concerned with the development of referebtial ability in children. (Editor)

Although a feature detection theory of pattern recognition is consistent with many recent physiological findings, the specific rules governing the perception of the distinctive features of letters have not yet been determined. This article presents two new experimental procedures for determining these rules. (Editor)

Visual masking occurs when one stimulus interferes with the perception of another stimulus. Investigates which matters more for visual masking--that the target and masking stimuli are flashed on the same part of the retina, or, that the target and mask appear in the same place. (Author/RK)

Subjects were required to discriminate previously learned "standard" versions of angular shapes from randomly perturbed "distrator" versions that varied in similarity to the standard. (Editor)

Investigated the nature of spatial representations underlying simple visually guided actions with 3- and 7-month-old infants. Saccades in older infants were executed within body-centered spatial coordinates that account for intervening eye movements, whereas younger infants responded according to the target's retinocentric locations without…

Effects on the event-related potential (ERP) waveform of differences in stimuli (task difficulty) and threshold were studied with 35 undergraduates performing a visual inspection time task and 30 performing a pitch discrimination task. In both tasks, ERP differences related to threshold were temporally localized differences in waveform shape. (SLD)

A visual oddball paradigm was used to investigate whether children with high functioning autism had difficulty detecting mutual gaze under experimental conditions. Findings revealed that children with autism were no better at detecting direct gaze than at detecting averted gaze, unlike normal children. Findings suggest that the lack of ability to…

Provides classroom activities centered around how the electromagnetic spectrum yields vital insights about the evolution of the universe. Activities targeted for grade levels 6-12 illustrate the importance of light and color in space exploration. Includes a poster. (Author/SOE)

In order to shed light on the needs of children with cortical visual impairments, normal visual development of infants is described. Infant preferences for motion, faces, and black-and-white patterns are explained. Colors useful in stimulating vision development and the time needed for exposure to visual stimuli are discussed. (CR)

This study tested the role of visual processing speed and IQ in reading with 124 children either with or without reading disability. Results indicated that processing speed explains a significant amount of variance in reading comprehension, as does IQ. Path analyses indicated that the effect of IQ on reading is partially mediated by decoding in…