To hold student interest, distance learning instructors need to think and present ideas visually. Presentations should be limited to three or four key points that would benefit from visual depiction. Visual aids used for presentation may be image-related, concept-related, or arbitrary graphics. Sophistication of visual aid is not as important as…

In two experiments, an adult presented 2-year-olds with an unfamiliar solid object, either rigid or flexible, and performed an action that emphasized the object's shape or material. Children were then asked to choose an object that matched the one shown. As hypothesized, the adult's action information alone directed children to attend to relevant…

Irritability and activity, components of temperament, were rated for 114 fullterm and 163 preterm infants during five-second application of a cold disc on the thigh and five seconds following. For fullterm infants and preterm females, irritability increased and activity decreased across five trials. Females were more irritable during stimulation,…

Examined infants' use of configural and physical knowledge in segregating three-dimensional adjacent displays. Found that infants do use configural knowledge: they expect similar parts to belong to same unit and dissimilar parts to belong to distinct units. Also found that physical knowledge, such as impenetrability and support, influences their…

Describes two variants of the form-priming paradigm (direct and mediated form priming) and summarizes the results obtained with each. With both variants, participants are presented with a target, to which a response is required, preceded by a prime. (28 references) (Author/CK)

Notes that phonemic restoration is a powerful auditory illusion. Points out that when part of an utterance is replaced by another sound, listeners perceptually restore the missing speech. Several paradigms measure this illusion and explore its bottom-up and top-down bases. Findings reveal that acoustic properties of the replacement sound strongly…

Notes that the primary use of sequence monitoring has been to determine which linguistic units are involved in word recognition and how these units might differ across languages. The task involves presenting subjects with targets either congruent or incongruent with a linguistic unit in the target-bearing item. The article focuses on the…

Effects on the event-related potential (ERP) waveform of differences in stimuli (task difficulty) and threshold were studied with 35 undergraduates performing a visual inspection time task and 30 performing a pitch discrimination task. In both tasks, ERP differences related to threshold were temporally localized differences in waveform shape. (SLD)

Addresses a "critical" or "reflective" visual literacy. Situates visual representations and their interpretation (the construction of meaning) within a context that raises questions about benefit and power. Explores four main topics: the image as text; analysis and meaning construction; visual literacy as a liberatory practice;…

In order to shed light on the needs of children with cortical visual impairments, normal visual development of infants is described. Infant preferences for motion, faces, and black-and-white patterns are explained. Colors useful in stimulating vision development and the time needed for exposure to visual stimuli are discussed. (CR)

Discusses two naming experiments in which it was shown that response times for morphologically structured pseudowords are faster than those for orthographically matched controls. Argues that the results, which are consistent with those obtained in lexical decision tasks with morphologically structured pseudowords, provide support for compositional…

In one experiment, sucrose arrested crying and reduced heart rate and gross activity in 2-week-olds but was ineffective in calming 4-week-olds unless accompanied by eye contact. In a second experiment, for 4-week-olds who received sucrose without eye contact or water with eye contact, the reduction in crying was modest and not sustained.…

In three experiments, 3-, 4-, and 5-year olds and adults identified words from a list presented by a single talker or multiple talkers. Subjects were less accurate identifying or slower repeating words spoken by multiple speakers than by a single speaker. Processing of multiple speakers' words became easier with age. Children matched their…

This study of six adults with blindness tested a code that facilitates the interpretation of tactile outline graphics by reducing potential ambiguities in figure-ground, slope, and curvature. Results found all subjects learned the code in less than two hours and successfully matched coded graphics to targeted objects. (Author/CR)

Examines whether the type of pictorial stimulus affects the quality of an individual's written expression. Compared a pictorial stimulus to a conventional line drawing stimulus in its ability to evoke writing samples. Results of 50 respondents, ages 13 to 46, indicated that the type of prompt used in an assessment of written expression makes a…