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…

Investigated with 64 upper middle class first-grade children of normal intelligence and visual perception was the construct validity of the trait of visual figure-ground perception. (Author/DB)

In order to evaluate the effectiveness of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC) in discriminating auditory or visual deficits, 121 learning disabled children (mean age 100 months) were tested. (PHR)

An 18-item "Shortened Visuospatial Questionnaire" (SVS) was validated twice, first by verifying that children (ages 8-13) identified with the SVS questionnaire as having visuospatial learning disability (VSLD) (n=54) actually showed visuospatial deficits on psychometric evaluation, and second, by rating with the SVS a clinically identified…

The paper evaluates the empirical and theoretical basis upon which several recent studies reject the hypothesis of a visual-perceptual deficit in reading disabilities. (Author)

Performances on the Bender Visual Motor Gestalt Test and on a visual discrimination task using the same forms were found not to be related. Implication for identification of perceptual deficiencies and subsequent perceptual training are discussed. (KW)

Two methodological problems often arising in dyslexia research are considered. The first problem concerns the validity of experimental measures and the related problem of interpreting null results. The second problem involves the effects of sampling from a disabled population if the disorder under investigation has multiple unknown origins.…

The paper suggests that the use of a single visual-motor test, (here, the Winter Haven Perceptual Forms Test) as a screening device for visual-motor difficulties in the first grade is questionable. (Author)

Evaluation of the Frostig Developmental Test of Visual Perception found that it measured a single general factor of perceptual organization which was weakly related to IQ and unrelated to reading ability. (KW)