Describes the American mathematical psychologists' computer-based method of constructing representations of the psychological structure of a set of stimuli on the basis of pairwise measures of similarity on confusability. Psychological structure is represented utilizing multidimensional spatial configurations and nondimensional tree-structures or…

Seventy-nine kindergarten and sixth-grade right-handed subjects were administered tasks to infer left-hemisphere and right-hemisphere processing and a measure of field dependence/independence. Results correlating to age and sex are discussed. (Author/SJL)

Kindergartners and second- and fourth-graders were asked to draw familiar objects to see if their drawings would be guided more by graphic principles or by the view before them. Use of graphic principles prevailed in choice of orientation, although many older children recorded other details of the objects they viewed. (Author/SJL)

Reviews research on the ways the design of the physical environment affects levels of social interaction and spatial orientation. (EF)

Five experiments investigated the young child's ability to retrieve a target after a change in the position of the child or the target. Subjects were preschool and elementary school children aged 2-10. (Author/MP)

Investigated the nature of spatial representations underlying simple visually guided actions with 3- and 7-month-old infants. Saccades in older infants were executed within body-centered spatial coordinates that account for intervening eye movements, whereas younger infants responded according to the target's retinocentric locations without…

Home economics is often denigrated for requiring little intellect. There is a strong cultural bias that undervalues sewing and relegates it to "handedness" instead of the loftier "headedness." According to Howard Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences, the two do not stand in opposition. Handiwork is a spatial intellectual…

Features responses to a problem that appeared in the January, 2001 issue of this journal. The problem concerned finding all of the shape combinations of two colors of blocks in four-block combinations. (KHR)

Presents a problem of tetras made with four cubes, mathematical ideas involved in this problem, and guiding questions for teachers. (KHR)

This study evaluated the ability of 40 blind adults to spatially organize large outdoor places using a verbal response survey and a near space lapboard task. The study found a high correlation between performances on the large outdoor environment with and without sighted guide tasks. The lapboard task also predicted performance in the outdoor…

Investigated spatial memory for written words as a behavioral consequence of verbal processing differences. Across three experiments with Chinese and U.S. college students, spatial memory for real and nonsense words was greater for Chinese logographs than for alphabetic English words. This spatial memory advantage was absent for pictures and…

This exploratory study experimentally investigated the influence of navigation mode, distracting links, sensation-seeking tendency, and spatial-synthetic ability on perceived disorientation and incidental learning in Web navigation. Discusses the results of the four-factor MANOVA design that had three dependent variables. (Author/LRW)

Memory and metamemory abilities of 24 severely to profoundly deaf students between the ages of 9 and 20 years old were studied. Results did not suggest spatial bias in encoding. Semantic knowledge was correlated with metamemory and free recall, and rehearsal mechanisms correlated with temporal position recall and paired-associate nonprototypic…

J. Dirks (1982) reported that the Block-Design subtest score from the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children--Revised is amenable to practice effects transferred from a game. Results from the assessment of two other spatial games, using 37 children in daycare (23 experimentals and 14 controls) indicate no transfer effects. (TJH)

Investigated the interpretation of the word "big" by 40 children of 3 to 5 years. The type and orientation of objects used in the study were varied. Results demonstrated that contextual factors influenced children's responses. (RJC)