Focusing primarily on learning disabled children, the article briefly reviews the literature related to perceptual skills required in reading acquisition and the validity of current perceptual measures to tap these task-related perceptual abilities, and proposes an informal task-related measure to overcome the drawbacks of more formal measures of…

This study investigated whether object-picture discrepancy occurs because preschool children regard pictures as significates rather than as signifiers. Results indicated the children did not consistently respond to objects and their pictorial representations equivalently. (Author/DB)

Results showed that both groups had a preferred dimension for size over pattern. When size and patterns were combined, the Down's syndrome Ss were confused by the two dimensions, showing preference for one or the other. (Author/DLS)

Based on studies and clinical findings, two techniques for testing infant vision are described: near-retinoscopy (used to assess the refractive state of infants and young children) and a fast preferential looking procedure (used to assess the acuity of infants up to one year of age). (DLS)

An investigation is reported of differences in boys and girls in three grade levels of the identification and construction of embedded and overlapping figures and the effect of instruction on identification. The only significant differences found were across the grade levels in construction. (MK)

Factors such as gestational age and birthweight were compared in a follow-up study of 66 neonates with diarrhea and two groups of infants--one with low birthweight, one with optimal birthweight. Among findings was that low birthweight was found to correlate with low test scores on visual perception regardless of whether the infants had had…

Examined adult age differences in the effects of perceptual grouping on attentional performance. All three age groups were slowed by the presence of similar irrelevant information, but the elderly were slowed more than were the young adults. (Author)

This study explored the effect of grade level and sex on affective ratings of color and black-and-white pictures by having 148 students from grades 4, 7, and 12 rate color and black-and-white slides on nine semantic differential scales. (JEG)

Two experiments investigated the process by which children encode briefly presented spatial positions. First, third, and fifth graders were asked to judge whether a test dot occupied the same position on a card as any one of a number of dots which had been presented tachistoscopically. (JMB)

Reports the findings of experiments that suggest that much of perception, even to high interpretive levels, is automatic and independent of intention or consciousness, and that the production of words in reading may involve problems that have nothing to do with articulation, even if the words have been identified. (GT)

The ability of young infants between the ages of 8 and 17 weeks to perceive outline shapes was investigated in nine experiments using an habituation paradigm. (JMB)

Five experiments were conducted in an attempt to establish whether elementary school children find it difficult to identify certain geometrical shapes when presented in the less usual orientations. (MP)

Visual perceptual abilities of 47 institutionalized trainable retarded Ss (mean age 20 years) were compared on selected measures of visual perception. (Author/PHR)

The results of this study provide educators and researchers with further information concerning selected elementary students' ability to catch balls as a result of specific ball color and background color combinations, therefore offering some additional insight into factors that influence catching behavior. (MB)