Understanding how responses become prepotent is essential for understanding when inhibitory control is needed in everyday behaviour. We investigated prepotency in the grass-snow task--in which a child points to a green card when the experimenter says "snow" and a white card when the experimenter says "grass". Experiment 1 (n =…

Activities involving photographs stimulate visual perceptual awareness. Children understand visual stimuli before having verbal capacity to deal with the world. Vision becomes the primary means for learning, understanding, and adjusting to the environment. Photography can provide an effective avenue to visual literacy. (Author)

Defines visual literacy and considers a number of elements of wordless picture books that contribute to the development of visual literacy in students. (FL)

The author urges art educators to contribute to holistic education by emphasizing the unique and alternative modes of thinking and acting which are intrinsic to visual arts. He presents two exercises to help students develop a perceptual rather than conceptual or linguistic mode. (Author/SJL)

Reports study findings which indicate that certain styles of family communication and mediation methods facilitate comprehension of television more effectively for boys than for girls. Also discusses differential effects of two styles of discipline on each sex. (PS)

Applies components of visual literacy to language acquisition and the development of language skills. Lists visual language competencies, with examples and suggested learning activities. (RL)

Discusses how use of photography in early childhood classrooms enhances visual literacy. Describes how to use photographs in the daily routine to involve parents, build children's identity, and enrich all areas of the curriculum. Also describes use of video cameras in the classroom. (HTH)

Describes a study that examined whether children respond differently when they speak and write about pictures as a result of participating in a visual literacy program. Fifth graders participating in such a program were asked to examine two books and choose one as a Caldecott winner, giving reasons for their choices. (nine references) (CLB)

The connectionist theory of brain functioning, which holds that specialization exists within the brain, has three implications for teachers of nonverbal communication. One implication involves the relative emphasis to be placed on linguistic/linear versus nonlinguistic/nonlinear mental processing. Teachers can shift emphasis to nonlinguistic…

Most art programs at the secondary level and beyond hope to produce students who can make discriminating aesthetic judgments about many kinds of visual art forms. This paper describes how students judge the art they encounter and suggests how art teachers might improve the quality of their students' responses. (Author/IS)

An examination of 18 children's reality-fantasy judgments about television indicated that such judgments shift with age from a focus on physical features and a rigid assessment of actuality, to a sensitivity to the plausibility of characters and plotlines, and an appreciation of authorial intent. Sixteen references are cited. (Author/MER)

Children's visual literacy can be enhanced by focusing their attention on aspects of the natural or built environment in the local community. Two activities use photographs and field trips to provide the building blocks of visual literacy: challenging activities, inquiry and problem solving, curiosity and the unexpected, and culture-based…

Discussion of students' understanding of illustrations in textbooks focuses on a British study designed to determine whether secondary school pupils could identify cut surfaces of objects in biological illustrations. Implications for theories of perceptual development and the role of illustrations in teaching are discussed, and further research…

Forty students, grades 4 and 8, were given match-to-sample tests on Western art, to gauge their ability to recognize paintings by the same artist. Eighth-graders performed reliably better than fourth-graders, and their matching justifications were more advanced. Prior artistic experiences improved style sensitivity. (SJL)

Analyzes the research strategies, stimuli, subjects, statistical strategies, and relative variables in 34 empirical studies on children's representation of three-dimensional objects. The studies fell into three categories: children's representation of spatial relationships within an object, between two objects, and studies that included both. (MJP)