The ability to rotate visual mental images is a complex cognitive skill. It requires the building of graphical libraries of information through short or long term memory systems and the subsequent retrieval and manipulation of these towards a specified goal. The development of mental rotation skill is of critical importance within engineering…

Results of a study of the pictorial preferences of seven-, nine-, and eleven-year-old children of two cultures indicated that "soft contours were generally preferred in both cultures, as were natural images--with the exception that older American girls prefer geometric elements. (JM)

Two experiments were conducted to assess whether the distribution of fixation times might be related to the prevailing cognitive activity involved with two different tasks, i.e., driving and observing colored fields. The results suggest that the distribution of fixation times can be associated with the prevailing cognitive activity while viewing.…

Studied infant ability to extract depth information from a three-dimensional structure. Found evidence that 8-month-old infants distinguished between lines indicating edges, and lines indicating markings, and that they are able to use line junctions to perceive line drawings as depicting three-dimensional objects in the picture plane. (Author)

Forty five-year-olds compared two arms of an L-shaped figure on-axis or perpendicular to axis inside circles of different diameters. In making perceptual judgments about the relative length, the children tended to describe the on-axis line as longer. The context model of visual anomalies was supported. (Author/CM)

The authors investigated whether emotional pictorial stimuli are especially likely to be processed in parafoveal vision. Pairs of emotional and neutral visual scenes were presented parafoveally (2.1[degrees] or 2.5[degrees] of visual angle from a central fixation point) for 150-3,000 ms, followed by an immediate recognition test (500-ms delay).…

Implication of this study is that recurrent findings regarding exploratory behavior and other measures of interest to experimental aesthetics have some cross-cultural validity. (Author/AM)

The spread of encoding concept was tested visually by having subjects view pictures which varied in contour completeness. The hypothesis was supported that as contour completeness decreased, the amount of perceptual analysis and memory performance would increase. (Author/MH)

Tries to unravel some of the problems concerning the previous finding that increasing the number of depth cues in pictures has a depressing effect on spatial accuracy of three dimensional reconstruction of pictures. Evidence does not support a deficiency in perceiving pictorial depth in African children. (AM)

Examines the development of young children's analysis of spatial patterns--specifically, hierarchical letter and geometric forms. Suggests that although children as young as four years of age demonstrated substantial analytic competence, their ability to integrate the parts of the spatial array to form a coherent whole was weaker and more easily…

This study investigated the effects of color cues as well as the absence of such cues on the recognition of visual images using as subjects 28 college students in a basic communications course. The stimulus materials were slides in three categories: (1) original color (realistic), (2) black and white, and (3) non-realistic color format. Subjects…

Practice in interpreting the critical features of incomplete line drawings and integrating fragmentary visual information was shown to enhance the visual efficiency of partially sighted children, aged 5 to 8. (BW)

Two experiments were conducted to assess the performance of freshmen chemistry students with poor spatial visualization skills. In the first experiment, 31 chemistry students with academically deficient backgrounds completed a diagnostic test of their ability to visualize and interpret pictorial representations of simple molecular structures. At…

This paper describes a study in which a Picture Readability Index (PRI) was used to investigate initial and extended perceptions of photographs. Readability criteria for evaluating instructional text seems to have been in place for a long time, yet instructional visuals like photographs and illustrations have typically been subject to no such…

Previous research has demonstrated that bizarre imagery facilitates long-term recall of noun pairs. A study investigated the effects of bizarreness when more pronounced delays were used. Subjects, 40 introductory psychology students from Illinois Benedictine College, were shown 30 plausible and 30 bizarre scenes at a viewing distance of…