Models for multidimensional scaling use metric spaces with additive difference metrics. Two important properties of additive difference metrics are decomposability and intradimensional subtractivity. A prediction was derived from these properties and tested experimentally. Eleven non-psychology students were used as subjects. Rectangles varying in…

A proposal that the normal reader does not pay attention to individual letters but to sets of features which are characteristic of a word as a whole is presented and tested in this investigation. It was hypothesized that the reader learns (1) to extract distinctive feature information simultaneously from several parts of the configuration and (2)…

This study was designed to determine whether subjects who received one of three treatments of color cues in an instructional program differed significantly on three learning tasks. Subjects were randomly selected from the kindergarten populations of two Michigan public schools and were assigned to one of three treatment groups. Eight letter-like…

The stimulus properties of the letters b, d, p, and q were investigated in an attempt to demonstrate that the common reversal of these letters by beginning readers is in part determined by the vertical aspect of the stimulus figure. One hundred eighty kindergarteners were randomly selected from a racially mixed population and randomly assigned to…

Forty infants, 10 at 4, 6, 8, and 10 months, were confronted by an experimenter who acted out angry, happy, sad, and neutral facial experssions, accompanied with appropriate vocalizations. The infants' responses were recorded on video tape and rated for attention, negative and positive affect, and activity. Results indicate that the 4-month old…

This study uses a habituation paradigm to systematically investigate the discrepancy hypothesis with male and female new borns. In addition, multiple visual response measures are used in monitoring the habituation process and the infant's response to various degrees of novelty. Ss were 36 apparently normal newborns (half of each sex) ranging in…

This report summarizes research concerning stimulus analyzing mechanisms, giving the main experimental findings and theoretical developments. Most of the data and the experimental findings are to be found in the 89 publications listed in the bibliography. The research is discussed under five main headings: (1) shape recognition, (2) selective…

The purpose of this study was to examine the extent to which a preassessment of motor development and perceptual skills predicts achievement in word recognition for kindergarten children. The instruments used for evaluation were the Lincoln-Oseretsky Motor Development Scale, Thurstone's Identical Forms Test, Wepman Auditory Discrimination Test,…

The efficacy of gating in the processing of simple, multidimensional stimuli was investigated. In Experiment 1, a continuous classification task was used, with subjects sorting cards according to binary dimensions of line orientation and location. Results suggested that orientation and location are integral dimensions, facilitation occurring with…

A sample of 107 subjects including kindergarteners, fifth graders, high school sophomores, parents of kindergarteners, and master artists were presented with a 108-item color perception test to investigate surface color perception at these age levels. A set of surface color perception rules was generated. (GO)

Thirty subjects were presented with a visual form discrimination task requiring them to match Roman letters when a variety of transformations were held constant. They were given massed practice across four blocks of eight stimuli. Results of a repeated measures analysis of variance showed support for the distinctive features hypothesis. (JC)

Presents results of an investigation of visual cues which lead to word and letter recognition. (SL)

By presenting moving bars of different widths to the two eyes, an attempt was made to model the differential visual persistence produced by differential intensity filtering in the two eyes (the Fertsch-Pulfrich effect). (Editor)

This study compared the use of discrete and relational aspects of visual configurations in making similarity judgments. Subjects were 3-, 4-, 5-, and 8-year-old children and adults. (BD)

The efficiency of several visual and auditory predictors of the Metropolitan Readiness Test was examined utilizing 106 grade 1 subjects considered by their teachers to show learning difficulties. (Author/JC)