This study examines how 31 middle-school children conducted multimodal analyses of video games. Over four consecutive days, students played video games for 30 minutes and then wrote written reflections about the multimodal symbols within the game and how these symbols influenced their interpretation and decision-making processes during gameplay.…

This essay focuses on the process of learning, discussing television viewing and written language in terms of discursive (words) and nondiscursive (art forms) symbolism. Libraries' use of these symbolic forms is also discussed. (EJS)

This article examines the abilities children exercise in a variety of record-making activities, including mapping, quantification, and music notation. The ways teachers and educational climates promote different versions of literacy are discussed. Children's conceptions of literacy are examined. (JL)

Reports research which reveals the difficulty children have in understanding (1) the real purpose of written language and (2) the abstract, technical vocabulary of language study and reading. (SW)

The impact of language (especially written language) on the acquisition of knowledge and skills in children is discussed. (MJB)

Twenty college students, naive to Blissymbols, were asked to "guess" the meaning of 64 Blissymbols presented without their word gloss. The influence of symbol representativeness and the concreteness of associated word labels on the symbols'"guessability" was analyzed. The guessability of a symbol's gloss was significantly…

Analyzes a report by D.D. Steinberg and J. Yamada that investigated which of the different types of scripts used in Japanese writing was the easiest to learn to read. (MKM)

Offers a rebuttal to Tzeng and Singer's criticism of the authors' study of the ease of learning to read the different Japanese scripts. States that the symbols and words were taught in the ordinary situation in which they are learned. (MKM)

Research on central processing dysfunctions in children is reviewed in three major areas. The first, dysfunctions in the analysis of sensory information, includes auditory, visual, and haptic processing. The second, dysfunction in the synthesis of sensory information, covers multiple stimulus integration and short-term memory. The third area of…