The paper reviews research efforts directed at identifying perceptual and cognitive components in reading and their dysfunction in disabled readers. Disruption in the processing sequence is identified, and a compensatory training technique for the reading disabled is described. (Author)

Reviews Greenough, Black, and Wallace's (1987) conceptual framework for understanding the effects of early experience and sensitive periods on development, and illustrates the applicability of their model with recent data on the consequences for animals and human infants of the acquistion of self-produced locomotion. (BN)

Replies to argument presenting evidence against a model of habituation during early infancy which was based on the selective adaptation of feature detectors. (Author/BB)

This paper offers a model of visual functioning focusing on three factors: (1) visual capacity, (2) visual processing, and (3) visual attention. Practical implications of visual therapy are considered, and intervention strategies with children with impaired visual functioning are suggested. (Author/DB)

Maintains that one future direction for cognitive development research involves a closer integration with knowledge about the developing brain. Presents a framework for analyzing and interpreting postnatal functional brain development. Discusses three contributing hypotheses, within which a variety of phenomena associated with the neural basis of…

Reviews a series of studies documenting that key aspects of helpless reactions to failure are present in preschool and early elementary school children. Proposes a preliminary model in which a general conception of self and the notion of this self as an object of contingent worth are sufficient conditions for helplessness. (HTH)

Based on a prior model on modularity of the brain, a new modular model of intrapersonal communication was developed which focuses on brain processing, encompassing both the structures and the functions of those structures in the creation of messages. The modular mind is a bio-social model of communication which presupposes a relationship between…

This article presents a literature survey and conceptual model of the perceptual-motor performance of children with visual impairment, in relation to their social development. The relationships between visual impairment and orientation, visual impairment and mobility, and motor performance and social integration are examined. (Author/SW)

All contemporary learning theorists agree on the advantages of involving students in authentic problem-solving activities in both in-school and out-of-school contexts. Approaches which use real-world problems as learning tools fit well with: (1) the strategy-based, performance model advanced by information processors; (2) the impasse or…

The concept of consciousness played a central role in Vygotsky's research and theory. Unfortunately, with the advent of behaviorism, consciousness fell into disfavor. One of the major obstacles in studying consciousness is that there is no single acceptable definition of the term. Various researchers have dealt with five different aspects of…

Rejects the neuronal fatigue, or selective adaptation, hypothesis of young infant habituation. Holds that studies cited by Dannemiller and Banks do not support the inferences of selective adaptation. Rejects the hypothetical neurophysiological mechanism of neuronal fatigue. Proposes that studies do not indicate that young infants' visual cortical…