Viewers who study photographs of scenes tend to remember having seen beyond the boundaries of the view ["boundary extension"; J. Exp. Psychol. Learn. Mem. Cogn. 15 (1989) 179]. Is this a fundamental aspect of scene representation? Forty undergraduates explored bounded regions of six common (3D) scenes, visually or haptically (while blindfolded)…

Examines 3-month-old infants' perception of "camouflaged" forms that were only visible when moving. Shows infants effectively use kinetic information to organize visual input in higher-order structures. (HOD)

The article reviews the role of the vestibular system, tactile system, kinesthetic system, visual system, balance, locomotion, body awareness, spatial system, mildline crossing, bilateral integration, form perception, and eye-food coordination in promoting an integrated motor base on which later learning is built. (CL)

This study examined the effect of incorporating a visuo-haptic and haptic (tactual-kinaesthetic) exploration of letters in a training designed to develop phonemic awareness, knowledge of letters and letter/sound correspondences, on 5-year-old children's understanding and use of the alphabetic principle. Three interventions, which differed in the…

Differences in how the two hemispheres of the brain handle spatial information were studied with blind subjects and blindfolded sighted subjects. The performances of all groups declined as the relative disorientation between the target and its duplicate increased, suggesting that visual imagery is not crucial to mental rotation. (Author/SEW)

Twenty-four adults with mild mental retardation were compared with equal-mental age children and adults without mental retardation on tactile processing asymmetries. Results suggest that hemispheric processing is dependent on information processing requirements rather than type of stimulus. (Author/JDD)

A circuit approach and station techniques are used to depict perceptual motor games for handicapped and nonhandicapped children. Twenty activities are described in terms of objectives, materials, and procedures, and their focus on visual tracking, visual discrimination and copying of forms, spatial body perception, fine motor coordination, tactile…

Performance of congenitally blind children and blindfolded children was compared on tasks requiring spatial reasoning and shape recognition. Blind subjects performed at least as well as blindfolded subjects on simple two-dimensional tactual processing tasks, but less well on more complex tasks requiring them to store, compare, and label objects.…

This article reviews recent research on perception of tangible pictures in sighted and blind people. Haptic picture naming accuracy is dependent upon familiarity and access to semantic memory, just as in visual recognition. Performance is high when haptic picture recognition tasks do not depend upon semantic memory. Viewpoint matters for the ease…

A follow-up account of a mother's attempts to provide her blind daughter, now aged six, with knowledge of the physical world through the manipulation of three-dimensional objects and two-dimensional tactile representations. The case is made for the value of pictures to the development of children's understanding in general; and for the child who…

The interrelationships of intelligence, field independence, analytic cognitive style, and spatial and perceptual abilities among boys were examined. The contribution of cognitive style to the prediction of English and mathematics achievement was investigated. Substantial overlap was confirmed between field independence and intelligence. An…

Examined, over a 10-year span, continuity in individual differences in cross-modal transfer to visually recognized shapes that had previously been felt but not seen. Found that cross-modal performance showed a left-hand advantage at 11 years. Cross-age correlations were significant when tactual exploration at 11 years was done with the left hand.…

In the past 25 years, there has been an explosion in research on the development of perception. The research has produced discoveries at multiple levels: ecological analyses, models of representation and process, and improved understanding of biological mechanisms. This book provides a comprehensive treatment of infant perception, bringing…

An educational program was designed to introduce spatial concepts to 30 congenitally/early-blinded children, aged 8-14, using a modified Optacon of Telesensory Systems, Incorporated. Using the vibrotactile stimulation device, the children learned to identify various objects correctly and to describe their relative spatial arrangements. (Author/JDD)

Five- to six-year-old children estimated the size of Euclidian objects using an addition rule of Height plus Width, rather than a multiplying rule. Within the framework of information integration theory, tested whether intensive handling of objects would facilitate shift from addition rule to multiplication rule. Found that following handling,…