Voluntary Visual Attention concerns "natural" viewing behavior or visual browsing when the subject is under no constraints regarding the distribution of attention. A general overview of this area of psychological investigation is presented. (Author/JKS)

Investigates the mechanisms of human visual perception by using computer generated displays. Introduces several experiments and demonstrations. (YP)

Preschool children's awareness of distinctions between animate and inanimate objects was assessed by showing stimulus films of animate and inanimate objects that moved in different ways. Results indicated that five- and some four-year-olds performed near adult levels, whereas three-year-olds did not, although the animate-inanimate distinction did…

Results of four related studies revealed (1) a trend toward better differentiation of the color attribute from four years through college-age; and (2) a possible stage of development, occurring before children can organize stimulus values conceptually or multidimensionally, in which they are able to organize or "dimensionalize" stimulus values…

The deficit in counting ability was examined through assessment of counting and tracking task performances of 18 adolescent educable mentally retarded (EMR) boys and through comparision of performances of 20 EMR boys and 20 younger normal boys. (Author/MC)

Sixteen deaf-blind, retarded, preschool postrubella children (mean age 6 years) were tested in an operant procedure which allowed them to select preferred illumination feeback as reinforcement for operating a simple two-choice lever switch. (Author/MC)

Assesses subjects' information output after presentation of pictorial, word, and sentence stimuli. Output is measured in two modes of response: reconstruction and verbal description. Complexity of the stimuli is demonstrated to have important effects on perceptual information processing. (DP)

The present paper is concerned particularly with the processes underlying the perception of the upright, that is, an object in its usual, or familiar, position in space. (Author/RK)

In the first experiment, 16 kindergarten children were tested on vertical/horizontal and oblique discriminations in symmetrical and asymmetrical alignments. When stimuli were asymmetrically aligned, the former discrimination was learned as rapidly as the latter. The second experiment demonstrated that the influence of configurational cues in…

Familiar letter sequences in noncued portions of a tachistoscopic display were shown to reduce accuracy of partial report. Findings suggest that familiarity may automatically direct attentional resources to a particular spatial region. Such attentional capture may be disruptive if the material is presented at another location. (Author/RD)

Seven-year-olds compared successively presented oblique lines which varied as to their position within a square display and their relation to the diagonal axis of the display. Children apparently encoded lines in terms of position and axis features. They used a categorical spatial representational system to compare oblique lines. (Author/RD)

Finke and Kurtzman report that fields of resolution increase with increases in the diameter of both perceived and imagined circular patterns. In contrast, we find no such increase for imagined circular patterns when the experimenter is not aware of the experimental predictions, even though our subjects received imagery training. (Author/RD)

Four experiments show that observers can selectively attend to one of two stationary superimposed pictures. Selective recognition occurred with large displays in which observers were free to make eye movements during a 3-sec exposure and with small displays in which observers were instructed to fixate steadily on a point. (Author/RD)