What is vision's role in driving early word production? To answer this, we assessed parent-report vocabulary questionnaires administered to congenitally blind children (N = 40, Mean age = 24 months [R: 7-57 months]) and compared the size and contents of their productive vocabulary to those of a large normative sample of sighted children (N =…

Young infants perceive an object's trajectory as continuous across occlusion provided the temporal or spatial gap in perception is small. In 3 experiments involving 72 participants the authors investigated the effects of different forms of auditory information on 4-month-olds' perception of trajectory continuity. Provision of dynamic auditory…

Evidence suggests that visual processing is divided into the dorsal ("how") and ventral ("what") streams. We examined the normal development of these streams and their breakdown under neurological deficit by comparing performance of normally developing children and Williams syndrome individuals on two tasks: a visually guided action ("how") task,…

Active and passive perceptual training methods were tested with 30 macular degeneration patients to improve their residual vision. The main conclusion was that perceptual training may contribute to successful visual adjustment and that the effect of training is not limited to a particular level of visual impairment. (Author/CL)

Although considerable progress has been made in understanding how adults perceive their direction of self-motion, or heading, from optic flow, little is known about how these perceptual processes develop in infants. In 3 experiments, the authors explored how well 3- to 6-month-old infants could discriminate between optic flow patterns that…

Three experiments investigated four-month-old infants' capacity to perceive bimodally specified events by detecting the temporal synchrony of sound bursts with the visable impacts of surfaces. (Author/SS)

This paper reports the major findings and interprets the results of longitudinal and cross-sectional exPeriments concerning the development of visual accommodation in infants 1 to 3 months of age. The stimulus was a high-contrast, random checkerboard which was presented at three different distances from the infants (25, 50 or 100 cm). The physical…

Three experiments investigated whether 4-month-olds would attend to and utilize the global configuration ("good form") of a partly occluded, moving object to perceive its unit and coherence behind the occluder. Results indicated that curvature per se provided information in support of completion, in addition to global configuration and…

Twenty-five older adults with age-related macular degeneration were separated into one of three groups: in-clinic training, take-home-training, or no-training. After testing, results showed that the ability to distinguish figure from ground is an improvable skill with the take-home group improving the most. (Author/DB)

This study compared improvements in visual function of 20 Spanish children with low vision, ages 4 to 6 years. Children received either the Barraga and Morris program or the Frostig program, or placebo control or no treatment. No significant differences between treatment groups were found. (DB)

This study evaluated the effects of perceptual training and psychological counseling on adjustment to vision loss in 49 elderly persons (mean age 70) with low vision. Overall, both interventions improved the participants' visual functioning and beliefs about the loss of vision, and follow-up interviews revealed that these improvements were…

Ancient philosophers, such as Plato and Euclid, believed in an extramission theory of visual perception, which held that there are emissions from the eyes during the act of vision. Three studies, comparing college and elementary school students, found a decrease over age in the belief in extramission and an increase in the belief that vision…

Practice in interpreting the critical features of incomplete line drawings and integrating fragmentary visual information was shown to enhance the visual efficiency of partially sighted children, aged 5 to 8. (BW)