Configuration and Position Encoding in Children

Farkas, Mitchell S.; Smothergill, Daniel W.

doi:10.2307/1129431

Cited by 3 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 7 publications

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“…2) Mason and Katz (1976) found that good and poor readers among 6th-grade children differed in their ability to identify the relative spatial position of letters. Farkas and Smothergill (1979) also found that performance on a position encoding task improved with grade level in children in 1 st , 3 rd and 5 th grade. 3) It was found that children's reading ability was associated with orientation errors in letter recognition such as confusing d and b, or p and q. stressing the role of visualorthographic skill in reading (e.g., Davidson, 1934Davidson, ,1935Cairns, & Setward, 1970;Terepocki, Kruk, & Willows, 2002).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 78%

Developmental changes in the visual span for reading

2007

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The visual span for reading refers to the range of letters, formatted as in text, that can be recognized reliably without moving the eyes. It is likely that the size of the visual span is determined primarily by characteristics of early visual processing. It has been hypothesized that the size of the visual span imposes a fundamental limit on reading speed [Legge, G. E., Mansfield, J. S., & Chung, S. T. L. (2001). Psychophysics of reading. XX. Linking letter recognition to reading speed in central and peripheral vision. Vision Research, 41, 725-734]. The goal of the present study was to investigate developmental changes in the size of the visual span in school-age children and the potential impact of these changes on children's reading speed. The study design included groups of 10 children in 3rd, 5th, and 7th grade, and 10 adults. Visual span profiles were measured by asking participants to recognize letters in trigrams (random strings of three letters) flashed for 100ms at varying letter positions left and right of the fixation point. Two print sizes (0.25 degrees and 1.0 degrees ) were used. Over a block of trials, a profile was built up showing letter recognition accuracy (% correct) versus letter position. The area under this profile was defined to be the size of the visual span. Reading speed was measured in two ways: with Rapid Serial Visual Presentation (RSVP) and with short blocks of text (termed Flashcard presentation). Consistent with our prediction, we found that the size of the visual span increased linearly with grade level and it was significantly correlated with reading speed for both presentation methods. Regression analysis using the size of the visual span as a predictor indicated that 34-52% of variability in reading speeds can be accounted for by the size of the visual span. These findings are consistent with a significant role of early visual processing in the development of reading skills.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 78%

Developmental changes in the visual span for reading

2007

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“…Farkas and Smothergill (1979) also concluded that since the accuracy with which a probe dot could be recognized as belong'ing to a prev'iously presented five-dot pattern increased as pattern goodness increased, patterns were coded as hol'istjc entities. If positions were encoded independently, then pattern goodness (a property of the entire pattern and not of constituent positions ) should not affect recognition accuracy.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Position and Identity in Visual Information Processing

Bunnell¹

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<p>Information that is presented visually can be described in terms of its identity and in terms of its position, and a distinction can be drawn between what an item is and where that item is. For example, a letter displayed on a screen has both an identity (its name) and a spatial position; the spatial position can be specified either absolutely (the upper right quadrant) or relatively (beside the "x" and above the "y"). There is an obvious and intimate relationship between the identity component and the position component, and it is this relationship, between the the processing of position information and the processing of identity information, that forms the subject of the present thesis. First, the relevant I literature is reviewed. The relationship between position and identity is examined in the context of two major research areas: iconic memory and short term visual memory. Second, the concept of dimensional separability is considered with reference to the appropriate literature. The purpose is to indicate a theoretical framework within which the issue of concern may be profitably addressed. The key idea to be developed is that position and identity are asymmetrically separable dimensions. A small group of studies that offer tentative support to this conceptualization will be discussed. Third, the results of eight related experiments are reported. These experiments involve the recognition of position and/or identity information in a discrete trials procedure. The eight experiments fall into three separate groups. Experiments 1 to 3 examine the recognition of either position or identity information, with the two types of information presented in relative isolation. Several stimulus factors are manipulated in order to demonstrate differential effects upon the two dimensions. Experiments 4 to 6 examine the effect of the irrelevant dimension upon recognition of the relevant dimension. Experiment 4 uses a logically balanced set of stimuli, so that the irrelevant dimension is either consistent or inconsistent, whereas in Experiments 5 and 6 each dimension is examined in the context of consistent, inconsistent, or neutral information on the irrelevant dimension. Experiments 7 and 8 explore the integration of position and identity information by varying the task requirements. Shared attention conditions are contrasted with selective attention conditions to show the impact of attentional strategy. The thesis concludes with a general discussion of the results, and their accordance with the hypothesis of asymmetric separability.</p>

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The contribution of visual processing to academic achievement in adolescents born extremely preterm or extremely low birth weight

Molloy

Battista

Anderson

et al. 2015

Child Neuropsychology

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Children born extremely preterm (EP, <28 weeks) and/or extremely low birth weight (ELBW, <1000 g) have more academic deficiencies than their term-born peers, which may be due to problems with visual processing. The aim of this study is to determine (1) if visual processing is related to poor academic outcomes in EP/ELBW adolescents, and (2) how much of the variance in academic achievement in EP/ELBW adolescents is explained by visual processing ability after controlling for perinatal risk factors and other known contributors to academic performance, particularly attention and working memory. A geographically determined cohort of 228 surviving EP/ELBW adolescents (mean age 17 years) was studied. The relationships between measures of visual processing (visual acuity, binocular stereopsis, eye convergence, and visual perception) and academic achievement were explored within the EP/ELBW group. Analyses were repeated controlling for perinatal and social risk, and measures of attention and working memory. It was found that visual acuity, convergence and visual perception are related to scores for academic achievement on univariable regression analyses. After controlling for potential confounds (perinatal and social risk, working memory and attention), visual acuity, convergence and visual perception remained associated with reading and math computation, but only convergence and visual perception are related to spelling. The additional variance explained by visual processing is up to 6.6% for reading, 2.7% for spelling, and 2.2% for math computation. None of the visual processing variables or visual motor integration are associated with handwriting on multivariable analysis. Working memory is generally a stronger predictor of reading, spelling, and math computation than visual processing. It was concluded that visual processing difficulties are significantly related to academic outcomes in EP/ELBW adolescents; therefore, specific attention should be paid to academic remediation strategies incorporating the management of working memory and visual processing in EP/ELBW children.

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Configuration and Position Encoding in Children

Cited by 3 publications

References 7 publications

Developmental changes in the visual span for reading

Developmental changes in the visual span for reading

Position and Identity in Visual Information Processing

The contribution of visual processing to academic achievement in adolescents born extremely preterm or extremely low birth weight

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