Learning characteristics of children with spina bifida (lesions on the spinal cord) are reviewed in the text of a presentation with slides, and the effects of such factors as hospitalization experiences and the presence of hydrocephalus are considered. Characteristics related to intelligence, sensory integration, tactile responsiveness, tactile…

This paper discusses aspects of the role of music in the preschool setting. The teaching and singing of folk songs are an avenue through which cultural literacy can be explored. A sensory approach to song learning that includes visual, kinesthetic, and aural stimuli increases children's vocabulary. Some theories suggest that musical intelligence…

To provide converging support that the proper integration of analog and propositional representational systems is associated with spatial ability, the visual, auditory, and bimodal brain event-related potentials were recorded from 50 right-handed Caucasian males. Sensory interaction indices were derived for these subjects who had taken the Surface…

The role of an occupational therapist (O.T.) in the education of emotionally disturbed children is examined. The neurological involvement of many emotionally disturbed children is linked to abnormal responses from sensory input and distortion or disorganization of perception. Possible explanations for differences between emotionally disturbed and…

Verbal recall of bisensory memory tasks was compared among 48 9- to 12-year old boys in three groups: normal readers, primary deficit readers, and secondary deficit readers. Auditory and visual stimulus pairs composed of digits, which incorporated variations of intersensory and intrasensory conditions were administered to Ss through a Bell and…

Goals and challenges pertaining to infant sensory and perceptual development are discussed. It is suggested that the inability of researchers to think and talk wisely about "partial accomplishments" in development creates a barrier in developmental research. Conceptual schemes are needed to accommodate these partial accomplishments. Three major…

In an attempt to address the issue of bimodal coordination of featural stimuli, the sensitivity of 3-month-old infants to the auditory and visual components of male and female stimulus configurations was examined. Measures were made of the infants' visual attention to a male or female face while they listened to a male voice, female voice, or to…

Psychometric test and the Uzgiris-Hunt Scale I (the Development of Visual Pursuit and the Permanence of Objects) were administered to mentally retarded preschoolers (N=105), school aged children (N=35), and adolescents (N=8), all functioning in the sensorimotor stage of development. Performances for each group are reported, and parent reactions…

An experiment was performed to show that infants perceive auditory and visual stimuli within a common space and that they perceive the sound as an attribute of the visual object. Subjects were 22 infants aged 3 to 5 months. Each infant was presented with a toy that moved in a small arc from side to side of a small window at the rate of one arc per…

Future assessments and instruction in reading in the primary grades will shift from a task oriented analysis toward a learner centered analysis designed to determine what the learner contributes to his or her own learning. Thus a "cognitivistic-mentalistic" rather than a behavioristic analysis of the reading act will occur. However, future…

The report presents the results of a pilot project designed to measure the effect of using Therapen (a device in the shape of a pen which contains a ball point pen and which the student uses to perform kinesthetic and tactile exercises) and the accompanying materials (Tape Program) on 238 educationally handicapped students (6 to 12 years old) with…

Reviewed are three types of etiological theories of dyslexia: theories of visual perceptual deficit, theories of difficulties with sensory integration, and theories of verbal deficiencies. The author concludes that recent findings weigh heavily against perceptual deficit theories of reading disability as suggested by S. Orton and others; that the…

If motivation to read fails to develop, reading failure is the outcome. All of us have very delicately balanced neural systems for integrating incoming sensory inputs, evaluating their significance in the light of past experience, and storing the learning for future use. Autistic and hyperkinetic children apparently have unbalanced neurological…

Seven-month-old infants require redundant information such as temporal synchrony to learn arbitrary syllable-object relations. Infants learned the relations between spoken syllables, /a/ and /i/, and two moving objects only when temporal synchrony was present during habituation. Two experiments examined infants' memory for these relations. In…

Provides an overview of presentations that were included in the Medical Symposium at the 1998 Learning Disabilities Association conference. The symposium addressed vestibular control and eye movement, postural sway and balance, cerebellar dysfunction, the role of the frontal lobe, developmental coordination disorder, and sensory integration…