A DOCTORAL DISSERTATION WHICH EXPLORES THE CLASSICAL THEORY OF PERCEPTION IN READING IS REPORTED. THE FACTS REPORTED IN PERCEPTUAL RESEARCH ARE REALIGNED IN TERMS OF CERTAIN PREMISES OF GENERAL OPEN SYSTEMS THEORY AS UTILIZED BY THE SUBSTRATA-FACTOR THEORY AND THE PARTICULAR POINT OF VIEW OF THE INFORMATION THEORIST BROADBENT TO PRODUCE A NEW…

Finds that children come to preschool with some knowledge of print but do not achieve mastery until the second or third grade. Finds a significant gender effect, but different patterns of that effect for each of the concepts about print task. (RS)

Reflects on the importance of observation and documentation of detail in producing critical thinking and accurate writing. (AEA)

Reports a study designed to determine whether students with learning problems could increase their own reading efficiency by learning through resources that complemented their perceptual strengths. Subjects were 16 children in a second grade learning disabilities class. Their reading vocabularies were improved during the perceptual program.…

A STUDY OF KINDERGARTEN PERCEPTION WAS MADE TO DETERMINE IF A FORMAL PROGRAM IN PERCEPTION IN KINDERGARTEN WOULD CONTRIBUTE TO THE GROWTH OF PERCEPTION IN CHILDREN AT THE END OF THE KINDERGARTEN YEAR AND TO SUCCESS AT THE FIRST-GRADE LEVEL. FOURTEEN KINDERGARTEN CLASSES WERE CHOSEN AT RANDOM FOR A CONTROL GROUP, AND 14 CLASSES WERE CHOSEN AT…

There are three main reasons why reading research has not had a stronger influence on what goes on in schools. The first reason is the powerful impact of social forces such as the bandwagon effect, the pendulum swing, and the prevailing climate of opinion. These factors determine to an unfortunately large degree whether or not particular research…

The purpose of this study was to determine if children given spatial relationship training had learned a definition and/or conceptualization of "in front" which was limited to two distinctly different classes of objects functioning in a specific relationship. Twenty-one children who had completed the "in front" training were given three sets of…

The purpose of this research was to explore the level of perceptual processing being used by normal and educable mentally retarded beginning readers. The investigation tested the hypothesis that beginning readers show a positive relationship between word length and word recognition latency, implying serial processing. Data on accuracy and latency…

Examines children's word perception demonstrating the role of Piaget's perceptual development formation and individual aptitude differences in problem solving strategies. (MM)

This report summarizes four groups of experiments examining the nature of basic perceptual processes in reading. The first group examined the relationship of English orthography to reading, specifically the transfer of information from the icon to short-term memory. The second group of experiments examined the use of peripheral information…

The responses of 108 children, aged five through nine, to the question, "What is reading?" were analyzed to determine whether there were age-related trends toward more mature and structurally more complex definitions of reading and whether a relationship existed between reading skill and the ability to formulate a definition of reading. The…

The purpose of this study was to determine how well children can identify the number of phonemic segments in spoken words and how this compares with their ability to deal similarly with syllables. The subjects were 46 preschoolers, 49 kindergarteners, and 40 first graders. Alphabetized class registers were used at each grade level to divide the…

Six separate experiments were undertaken to test the hypothesis that poor readers in first, second, and third grade would have more difficulty with simple perceptual discriminations than would good readers in the same grades. Various tasks were used in the experiments, including discrimination of line orientations, checking letters in three-letter…