VISUAL TRAINING IS DEFINED AS THE FIELD OF OCULAR REEDUCATION AND REHABILITATION OF THE VARIOUS VISUAL SKILLS THAT ARE OF PARAMOUNT IMPORTANCE TO SCHOOL ACHIEVEMENT, AUTOMOBILE DRIVING, OUTDOOR SPORTS ACTIVITIES, AND OCCUPATIONAL PURSUITS. A HISTORY OF ORTHOPTICS, THE SUGGESTED NAME FOR THE ENTIRE FIELD OF OCULAR REEDUCATION, IS GIVEN. READING AS…

The ability of 50 lower middle-class and 25 upper middle-class prereading children to discriminate between pairs of uppercase alphabet letters was tested. A set of 3x5 cards with a sample stimulus in the upper center section of each card and two alternative choice stimuli just below and to the right and left of the sample was used. The 650 total…

Presents the results of investigating mature readers' focal points when viewing letters, words, and phrases. Several hypotheses from the experiments imply subconscious preprocessing for the mature reader. (JM)

Reports a series of studies that investigated the role of parafoveal vision in reading by using the Stroop phenomenon. Supports the "peripheral search guidance" process of Hochberg's model of reading, and provides evidence of processing variations across retinal location. (RL)

The purpose of this study was to investigate the visual discrimination abilities of regular class children with varying levels of word recognition skill and of special class children. Word recognition and intelligence scores were obtained on 90 primary-aged children in regular classes and on seven children in a special class. The subjects were…

Describes a study of the visual discrimination abilities of children who varied in their ability to recognize words. Indicates that visual discrimination skills of the type needed to discriminate between single artificial graphemes do not seem essential for the word recognition aspect of reading. (TJ)

Demonstrates that discrimination training with verbal materials (words and letters) is generally more helpful than training with non-verbal forms. (RB)

Confirmed the hypothesis that those in the three-dimensional instructional group would make fewer confusion errors that those in the two-dimensional instructional group on a transfer task in reading. (RB)

Suggests color highlighting as an effective method of improving word recognition visual discrimination skills. (RB)

This study investigated the relation between field independence/field dependence (FI/FD) and reading success. One hundred kindergarten children from a predominantly white, middle-class community were administered a Portable Rod and Frame Test as a measure of cognitive style. The upper and lower 27% were identified and designated Field Dependent…

This paper reports initial results in the development of an inventory to measure visual reading difficulties. The instrument, called the Word Preference Inventory (WPI), asks the subject to choose between pairs of stimulus pseudo-words the one most like a given target word. An analysis of responses to the WPI from 922 children in grades K-6 and…

Research indicates that young children seem to have considerable difficulty in discrimination between the letters b, c, p, and q. Also, 4-year-olds appear to commonly make rotation and reversal errors with letter-like forms. Whether young children will perform significantly better or not in deciding whether two shapes are called same or different…

The purpose of this Title VI study was to determine which pairs of lowercase alphabet letters were most frequently confused by prereading children and therefore most likely to cause difficulty in initial reading. Two sample groups were used: 50 lower-middle-class kindergarten children with a median age of 6 years and 25 upper-middle-class nursery…

A REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE CONCERNING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN MEASURE OF PREREADING VISUAL DISCRIMINATION AND FIRST-GRADE READING ACHIEVEMENT IS GIVEN. THE RELATIVE PREDICTIVE POWER OF VISUAL DISCRIMINATION OF LETTERS, WORDS, GEOMETRIC DESIGNS, AND PICTURES WHEN THESE ABILITIES ARE STUDIED INDIVIDUALLY AND IN COMBINATION IS INDICATED. STUDIES…