The effects of black and white and color illustrations on student achievement were studied to investigate the relationships between cognitive styles and instructional design. Field dependence (FD) and field independence (FI) were chosen as the cognitive style variables. Subjects were 85 freshman students in the Iowa State University Psychology…

Examines development of processing speed in three backward masking studies, where presentation of second stimulus figure (mask) within a critical time interval from arrival of first figure (target) interrupts processing of first. Results indicate that processing time increases until early adolescence; changes are less marked after 13 years of age.…

The study examined the ability of five deaf-blind subjects to receive fingerspelled materials through the tactual sense, and of six deaf subjects to receive fingerspelling through the visual sense. Results found highly accurate tactual reception at normal rates and suggested that rates for visual reception are limited by the rate of manual…

Earlier research (Thorson, et al., 1976) found that latencies increase for acoustically confusable letter pairs and decrease for visually confusable letter pairs as a positive function of interstimulus interval (ISI). To extend these findings to different age groups, 30 young adults (mean age, 21.4 years) and 30 older adults (mean age, 68.8 years)…

The processing of mental structures in perception appears to be serial, in that viewers can fill in missing parts from an impoverished stimulus following a top down process. To investigate the effects of unfamiliarity, complexity, and legibility on object and layout perception of unfamiliar stimuli, ten subjects were shown one of four ribbon…

Videotaped productions of isolated American Sign Language signs or sentences were presented at speeds of two to six times normal. Results indicated a breakdown in intelligibility at around 2.5 to 3 times the normal rate. Results are similar to those found for auditory reception of time-compressed speech suggesting a modality-independent limit to…

Purposes a semiotic model for analyzing messages of the cinematic medium in film and television, and demonstrates its applicability to the study of children's comprehension of these messages. Highlights include the effects of visual and temporal features on comprehension; film and photography; and cognitive-developmental factors in comprehension.…

The study of the performance of 55 learning-disabled college students on the Raven's Progressive Matrices and other tasks found: (1) a negative correlation between visual-motor skills and written language, (2) a positive correlation between visual organization/memory and mathematics, and (3) a positive correlation between auditory memory and…