Describes two hours in the life of an eight-year-old to demonstrate that children acquire information and develop language skills from multiple sources. Argues that the conceptualization of literacy must be broadened from reading and writing skills to a definition that recognizes the layering of information and that includes all forms of the…

According to the theory of Piaget, until the age of two the chief developmental factor of a child is the permanence of an object or the ability to retain mental images. Between two and six he begins to use mental images, and as he develops the ability to retain a mental image he begins to imitate things from the past which he has seen or…

Defines illustrations and discusses their effective use. Topics include information literacy; statistical graphics; visual literacy; illustrating student term papers; understanding the visual display of information; illustrations that instruct; cognitive processes; and criteria for effective explanatory illustrations. (LRW)

High School teachers from Idaho and Utah describe several experience-oriented teaching strategies that exemplify what teachers can produce when given support to undertake sustained curriculum development. (Author/JH)

It is necessary to provide a comprehensive program of visual literacy skill development to provide a firm foundation for reading comprehension. A taxonomy of visual literacy can suggest an outline for such a program. Once the student has been made aware of the desired thought processes in familiar contexts, it is then appropriate to guide the…

An experiment was conducted in which the relationships of basic television and film codes to particular literacy mental skills were examined. Different versions of the same film, each focusing on a different code, were produced and shown to fifth graders. It was found that children with initially better mastery of the relevant skills extract more…

The purpose of this paper is to examine the ways in which teachers and students can leverage the power and potential of visuals to encode information and experiences as personalized meanings, and to help people create their own timeless images as ways to understand the world. The foundation is laid for conducting research to test the assertion…

This investigation into the effects of configural properties (properties determined by the interrelationships existing between component parts) used a selective attention task to determine whether intersection is a primary encoding feature or is constructed after slopes and heights are perceived. The method for encoding feature identification,…

Discusses the potential that definitions of visual and television literacy offer for understanding computer literacy. Three areas of visual literacy research covered include visual communication and languaging; visual processing and thinking; and general definitions of visual literacy. Anderson's television literacy objectives are also reviewed.…

Examines the relationship between art and technology by discussing the impact of television. Describes this relationship from five different perspectives. Suggests that it remains to be seen whether technology will replace the printed page and lead to a more visually and aurally receptive state. (KO)

One of the most basic theoretical areas in the study of visual communication and visual literacy is the nature of representation. Some of the important research in this area is reviewed in this paper, and a model of representation is developed that satisfies many of the philosophical concerns. The paper begins with a discussion on the relationship…

The essence of understanding visual literacy lies in the visually literate exploration of issues process. This understanding must deal with both the processes involved in the creation and interpretation of concrete visual communication. Visual discourses's greatest contribution to human knowledge and thought is not the sequential, linear,…

This paper develops a theoretical context for the concept that visual literacy involves a specific type of information processing that has been discussed in the literature on symbolism and epistemology for a number of years. Literacy is discussed first, as a general process of information processing involving the generation of knowledge through…

In two experiments subjects were required to determine whether a random, angular form, presented at any of a number of picture-plane orientations was a "standard" or "reflected" version. Average time required to make this determination increased linearly with the angular departure of the form from a previously learned orientation. (Author/BJG)