This report suggests that eye movements may be related in some fundamental manner to cognitive functioning. A metaphor is presented to show that quality of information processing need not exclusively reflect processes deep inside the brain but could also be affected by peripheral motor mechanisms. (Author/AL)

Two hundred seventy-four boys and girls, aged 7 through 15 years, participated in a test-retest reliability study of the Developmental Tests of Visual-Motor Association. Test-retest correlations for the total group and subjects comprising categories A through D were significant. (Author/SJL)

Using 60 subjects, aged five to eight, this study assessed the magnitude of relation between deaf children's perceptual motor development, measured by the Developmental Test of Visual Perception, and their language development. The relationship was positive and significant, but the value too small to indicate reliable association for individuals.…

Fifteen autistic children (7 to 13 years old) were matched with normals on the Beery-Buktenica Developmental Test of Visual-Motor Integration. The primary deficit observed in the autistic Ss appeared to be defective monitoring of the motor response. (Author)

Studied developmental changes in rhythmic motor skills by observing the hand clapping of 3- through 7-year olds. Found that a variable measuring coordination of children's arms while clapping changed from a nonconstant magnitude in younger clappers to a constant magnitude in older clappers. (BC)

Four experiments investigated 4-, 6-, and 9-month-old infants' ability to perceive whether the width relationship between a block and the opening of a box specified passing through or support. Found that six- and nine-month olds looked significantly longer than four-month olds when a block wider than a box opening passed through this opening. (MDM)

This analysis of nine young adult males with Down's syndrome found that subjects had great difficulty in completing a skilled motor-perceptual task. Compared to controls, they were much slower, less accurate, and achieved fewer target performances. These behavioral patterns were associated with movement-related brain macropotentials altered in…

Studied effect of attention on smooth pursuit and saccadic tracking in infants at 8, 14, 20, and 26 weeks old. Found an increase across age in overall tracking, gain of smooth-pursuit eye movements, and increased amplitude of compensatory saccades at faster tracking speeds. Findings show that development of smooth pursuit, targeted saccadic eye…

Articulatory discoordination is often said to be an important feature of the speech production disorder in dysarthria, but little experimental work has been done to identify and specify the coordination difficulties. The present study evaluated the coordination of labial and lingual gestures for /u/ production in persons with Parkinson's disease…

Paraneoplastic cerebellar degeneration (PCD) is an autoimmune disease that can be associated with cancer of the breast, lung, and ovary. The clinical presentation of PCD commonly includes ataxia, visual disturbances, and dysarthria. The speech disturbances associated with PCD have not been well characterized, despite general acceptance that…

Attentional requirements for the spontaneous integration of stimulus and response features were analyzed. In line with previous findings, carrying out a prepared response to the onset of a stimulus created bindings between the response and the features of that stimulus, thereby impairing subsequent performance on mismatching stimulus-response…

The objective of the current report is to review experimental findings on centrally patterned movements and sensory and descending modulation of central pattern generators (CPGs) in a variety of animal and human models. Special emphasis is directed toward speech production muscle systems, including the chest wall and orofacial complex during…

Soft constraints hypothesis (SCH) is a rational analysis approach that holds that the mixture of perceptual-motor and cognitive resources allocated for interactive behavior is adjusted based on temporal cost-benefit tradeoffs. Alternative approaches maintain that cognitive resources are in some sense protected or conserved in that greater amounts…

This paper reviews the literature comparing the perceptual strategies of expert and novice sport/skill performers in ball sports to specifically identify where differences exist. The following comparisons were made: (1) experts attend to fewer, somewhat different visual cues than beginners; (2) experts exhibit an ability to utilize advanced…