A study tested the theory that an item that stands out from its background is better remembered than one that is similar to the background (the isolation effect). Specifically, the study examined whether the isolation effect would be greater when there was a larger and more confusing mass of background items, whether position of the isolated item…

A parallel distributed processing model of visual word recognition and pronunciation is described. A key feature is the assumption that there is a simple, uniform procedure for computing a phonological representation from an orthographic representation for irregular words as well as regular words. (SLD)

A series of studies investigated the manner in which information is utilized during fixations in continuous reading. Utilization refers to visual information being processed to further the comprehension of the text being read, in contrast to registration, which refers to visual information simply being available to the brain. The studies…

Work with patients with attentional deficits produced by posterior cerebral lesions has shown that such patients can identify words correctly even when they fail to report letters in nonwords contralateral to the lesion. Because of this, it has been assumed in cognitive neuropsychology that lesions do not produce new phenomena but instead provide…

To gain a better understanding of visual perception in reading, a study tested the predictive validity of the Goodman Model of Reading by measuring the extent to which 82 college students (graduate and undergraduate) were able to perceive and accurately report 10 lines of print. It also attempted to integrate research conducted over the past 100…

Concludes that there is a relationship between imagery level and comprehension and that imagery level of text can be determined "a priori" of pupils reading text. (FL)

Two experiments investigated the linear and nonlinear processes involved in a visual search of letter displays. The displays used in the experiments were well-illuminated 6 x 6 degree or 10 x 10 degree fields containing from 2 to 23 capital As, Bs, or Cs located randomly over the displays. The task of the subjects was to decide as rapidly as…

This report describes a series of studies of how children learn to operate on incoming information as it is transmitted by language or pictorial representations. Specifically, the studies examined (1) the relationship between what is known and the structure of incoming information and (2) the active operations children use in the process of…

A study assessed the role of orthographic structure in college students' perceptual recognition and judgment of letter strings. Lexical status, word frequency, bigram frequency, log bigram frequency, and regularity of letter sequencing were orthogonally varied across a series of experiments. Six-letter words and their anagrams were used as test…

Chapter 1 of this report, "Introduction and General Recommendations for Eye-Movement Research and Instrumentation," discusses research priorities; encouraging and supporting theories, models, or simulations of information processing; and improved instrumentation in the field of visual information processing. Chapter 2, "Summary of…

Intended to lend organization to the educational media research in visual perception and learning with line drawings, this paper reviews studies that cut across several specialized fields of education and psychology. The studies reviewed are arranged into the following categories: (1) learning from visuals, (2) abstract versus realism theories,…

A study examined the effects of pictorial and verbal illustrations on the initial learning and long term retention of written instruction. Subjects were eighth and ninth grade students randomly assigned to one of two text conditions (literal or analogous instructions) under one of four pictorial conditions (no picture, functional drawing,…

The purpose of this study was to determine whether children as young as second-graders could encode categorically within an abstract evaluative dimension. The study uses mode of stimulus presentation (auditory or visual) as an independent variable. The subjects were 40 white middle class children from grades 2, 4, and 6, who were randomly assigned…

Concludes that there may be differential effectiveness of method of reading instruction according to sex, with females finding letter training simpler than word training and males finding the reverse. (FL)

Research data in neurosurgery, neuropsychology, and neurolinguistics indicate that the human brain is lateralized toward one of two methods of information processing, and that, in most humans, the language bias appears to be a left hemisphere function, while the visiospatial bias belongs to the right. Furthermore, the left hemisphere seems to…