The act of composition is based on perception, selection, and arrangement in time and space of what is seen. How the world is seen depends on experience, memory, sensibility, discriminative powers, sexual identity, and cultural and historical contexts. Students can learn to understand how their personality affects what they see by maintaining…

The goals of visual literacy experiences are to give the student skill in "reading" visuals and in expressing himself and communicating through visuals. (JH)

This paper develops a theoretical context for the concept that visual literacy involves a specific type of information processing that has been discussed in the literature on symbolism and epistemology for a number of years. Literacy is discussed first, as a general process of information processing involving the generation of knowledge through…

In two experiments subjects were required to determine whether a random, angular form, presented at any of a number of picture-plane orientations was a "standard" or "reflected" version. Average time required to make this determination increased linearly with the angular departure of the form from a previously learned orientation. (Author/BJG)

This study investigates the relationship of teaching strategies emphisizing visual problem solving through the medium of photography to increased visual perceptual levels in second and third grade students. Twenty-five subjects from three classroom groups were randomly assigned to one of three treatment groups labeled Perceptual Principles Group…

Visual sequences should be the first visual literacy exercises for reasons that are physio-psychological, semantic, and curricular. In infancy, vision is undifferentiated and undetailed. The number of details a child sees increases with age. Therefore, a series of pictures, rather than one photograph which tells a whole story, is more appropriate…

A resume of the courses taught by the Centre for film and television education at all levels of education. It is also valuable for the training of visual perception in general. (Author/HB)

Discusses how use of photography in early childhood classrooms enhances visual literacy. Describes how to use photographs in the daily routine to involve parents, build children's identity, and enrich all areas of the curriculum. Also describes use of video cameras in the classroom. (HTH)

In this article, the authors designed a study to explore what children's own drawings reveal about their viewing skills and to examine the interplay between visual and verbal literacies. Specifically, the authors wanted to determine how two communication systems--visual and verbal literacies--contribute to children's abilities to extract meaning…

In this age of proliferating visual communications, there is a permissiveness in subject matter, content, and meaning that is exhilarating, yet overwhelming to interpret in a meaningful or consensual way. By recognizing visual statements, whether a piece of sculpture, an advertisement, a video, or a building, as communication, one can approach…

Likert-type rating scales were designed and used to help college students perceive, understand, and value the beauty and content of a piece of art. The subjects for the project were 100 college students enrolled in two art appreciation courses at Texas College. Their classification ranged from freshman to senior, with majors mainly in business,…

This research indicates that art education can help develop visual perceptual abilities which can be applied to all areas of learning. Skills in visual perception developed through the study of art will help integrate subject areas. The study organized research and information that emphasized the redefinition of art in the elementary school…

Because understanding pictures is a significant aid to readers, this paper explores research on picture interpretation. The paper describes the complexity of the process and states that the ability to interpret pictures seems to proceed from the simple to the complex: from concrete experiences with pictures to the abstract interpretation of…

Implication of this study is that recurrent findings regarding exploratory behavior and other measures of interest to experimental aesthetics have some cross-cultural validity. (Author/AM)

This listing of sources pertaining to various aspects of visual communication and their instructional implications contains dissertations, journal articles, books, papers and projects. Eighty-two entries through 1972 are organized in seven sections: (1) the process of communication, (2) research design, (3) screen education/ visual literacy:…