Since Broca's studies on language processing, cortical functional specialization has been considered to be integral to efficient neural processing. A fundamental question in cognitive neuroscience concerns the type of learning that is required for functional specialization to develop. To address this issue with respect to the development of neural…

Recent research has shown that 2-year-olds fail at a task that ostensibly only requires the ability to understand that solid objects cannot pass through other solid objects. Two experiments were conducted in which 2- and 3-year-olds judged the stopping point of an object as it moved at varying speeds along a path and behind an occluder, stopping…

Sixteen school-age children with specific language impairment (SLI) and 16 age-matched controls were tested for immediate recall of digits presented visually, auditorily, or audiovisually. Recall tasks compared speaking and pointing response modalities. SLI children showed small recency effects as well as an unusually poor recall when visually…

Previous research with both brain-damaged and neurologically intact populations has demonstrated that the right cerebral hemisphere (RH) is superior to the left cerebral hemisphere (LH) at detecting anomalies (or incongruities) in objects (Ramachandran, 1995; Smith, Tays, Dixon, & Bulman-Fleming, 2002). The current research assesses whether the RH…

Investigates developmental changes in the accuracy of aimed movements made to an illuminated target lamp by children between the ages of 1.5 and 8 years. Shows accuracy decreased with decreasing availability of visual information and improved with age under all conditions. (HOD)

The study of the performance of 55 learning-disabled college students on the Raven's Progressive Matrices and other tasks found: (1) a negative correlation between visual-motor skills and written language, (2) a positive correlation between visual organization/memory and mathematics, and (3) a positive correlation between auditory memory and…

Examined perception of object unity in partial occlusion in 72 infants. Recorded how long subjects looked at a display of complete and incomplete rods. In test and control conditions, infants looked longer at broken rods than at complete rods, suggesting that infants' cognitive, visual, or attentional skills may be insufficient to support…

Twenty-one children (approximate ages 6 to 16), drawn from the larger pool of 100, with Tourette's Syndrome were evaluated to: (1) determine the prevalence of learning disorder in this population; (2) identify particular areas of academic difficulty; and (3) consider the spectrum of central nervous system processing deficits in these children. Not…

A rationale and procedures are presented for occupational therapy evaluation of the preschooler whose problems suggest dyspraxia. Two evaluative domains are examined: sensory processing (assessment of tactile, proprioceptive, vestibular, auditory and visual functions) and praxis (ideation, motor planning and execution). Procedures include…