A literate child is one who is able to read, write, speak and listen. Literacy begins at birth, and continues steadily as children develop. The explicit processes that form emergent literacy are for example, phonemic awareness, letter and word recognition, vocabulary enrichment and structural analysis. These literacy practices are well documented…

Children with disabilities have frequently participated in various interventions before the efficacy of those practices was scientifically validated. When subsequent scientific evidence failed to support particular practices, those that had already made inroads into the educational arena frequently continued to be used. Given the current emphasis…

Watching a rubber hand being stroked by a paintbrush while feeling identical stroking of one's own occluded hand can create a compelling illusion that the seen hand becomes part of one's own body. It has been suggested that this so-called rubber hand illusion (RHI) does not simply reflect a bottom-up multisensory integration process but that the…

The present study used functional magnetic resonance imaging to delineate cortical networks that are activated when objects or spatial locations encoded either visually (visual encoding group, n = 10) or haptically (haptic encoding group, n = 10) had to be retrieved from long-term memory. Participants learned associations between auditorily…

Music commonly induces the feeling of a regular beat (i.e., a metrical structure) in listeners. However, musicians can also intentionally impose a beat (i.e., a metrical interpretation) on a metrically ambiguous passage. The present study aimed to provide objective evidence for this little-studied mental ability. Participants were prompted with…

In the cutaneous rabbit effect (CRE), a tactile event (so-called attractee tap) is mislocalized toward an adjacent attractor tap. The effect depends on the time interval between the taps. The authors delivered sequences of taps to the forearm and asked participants to report the location of one of the taps. The authors replicated the original CRE…

Because sensorimotor and environmental factors have a profound effect on children's learning, every teacher should know how to weave strategies from occupational therapy (OT) into their everyday instruction. This is the guidebook K-3 teachers need to "think like an OT"--and form effective partnerships with OTs in their schools--so all students can…

All children have their own unique ways of interacting with their environments, connecting with people around them, and learning about their world. Babies take in information from their senses and use this information to respond to people and events. Children's daily experiences facilitate integration of their senses. These early sensory…

The study concerned the effects of induced interference, employing a backward masking paradigm, on the processing of sensory information and on the formation of perceptual-motor responses in 20 dyslexic and 20 normal children (mean age 8.2 years). (Author/PHR)

A review of research since Ayers' (1972) report on sensory integration (SI) concludes that SI is not supported as an effective treatment for academic problems of children with learning disabilities. It is not clear whether SI is more effective than perceptual-motor approaches or maturation alone. (SK)

As human beings, we can interact with our environment through the sense of touch, which helps us to build an understanding of objects and events. The implications of touch for cognition are recognized by many educators who advocate the use of "hands-on" instruction. But is it possible to know something more completely by touching it? Does touch…

Reports that no significant relationships were found between the selected visual perceptual, visual motor, and inter-sensory integration skills and reading achievement. (TO)

After distinguishing between neocortical abilities for executive control and subcortical sensory motor skills for proprioceptive and vestibular integration, we compare a sample of 116 normal preschoolers with a sample of 31 preschoolers receiving occupational therapeutical treatment. This is done in an experimental design controlled for age (mean:…

This paper offers teachers basic information about sensory integration and suggests strategies for managing classrooms which include children with sensory integrative dysfunction. The first section looks at what sensory integration is, noting especially the roles of the three "near senses": the vestibular system, the proprioceptive system, and the…

Four experiments studied the perception of the unity and boundaries of objects by 88 4-month-old infants who manipulated them out of the visual field. Infants perceived the unity/boundaries of these objects by detecting the motion patterns they themselves produced. Discrimination between motion patterns transferred from touch to vision. (SLD)