[PSC -- CONT'D]

 

A similar phenomenon may be noted in the sensory-motor behaviors related to speech and audition.  The vocal mechanism, as it relates to audition, is in this sense the counterpart to the hand as it relates to vision. Until the child learns to mediate sounds visually, vocalization is the only reliable method he has for exploring what he has heard. As he matures, the child depends less upon explicit vocalization for analyzing spoken sounds he develops the ability to analyze spoken sounds covertly--as though he had stated them aloud. Hence, again we observe a shifting from sensory-MOTOR to SENSORY-motor; and again, given a series of spoken sounds that are not familiar to the listener--be he adult or child--­one will note manifestation of overt or sub-vocalization as a tangible means for analyzing that which has been heard.

 

Developmental studies (Zinchenko, 1970) have shown that these two basic transformations: "Global à Differentiated" and "sensory­-MOTOR à SENSORY-motor," occur simultaneously. Indeed, they tend to be mutually reinforcing.  The acquisition of more articulate man­ual and vocal motor skills provides for more precise exploration of visual and acoustical sensory data which, in turn, allows for more differentiated visual and auditory analysis behaviors that depend less and less upon tangible, tactile-kinesthetic confirmation as higher levels of organization are achieved.  These more elaborate receptor skills then serve to monitor the vocal and digital manipulative skills more precisely, and so on.

 

Hand and eye, speech mechanism and ear, function as though linked in a continuous loop, each component serving to refine the process of the other through feedback. Ultimately, as proposed above, overt ex­plorations of visual and acoustical data become redundant and inefficient. Overt behaviors then become covert; explicit tactile-kinesthetic involve­ment becomes implicit. Thus the child acquires the basic information processing competencies needed to analyze and synthesize visual and auditory communications--the aptitudes assumed by the instructional programs of his classroom.

 

Visual-Motor Skills Development

 

What are these skills? It is easier to describe, first, how they are tested. Many visual-motor tests are limited to discrimination re­sponses in which the child is asked to indicate whether two graphic patterns are, or are not, identical. Since appropriate classroom perfor­mance requires the child to produce perceptual constructs as well as receive them, discrimination tasks, as customarily designed, provide in­sufficient information.  The ability to recognize similarities and differences in visual patterns is not equivalent to knowing the construction of patterns well enough to produce them accurately. Copying tests, therefore, serve our needs better.

 

Gesell (1940), Starr (1961), Bender (1938), and others have shown that most children, as they mature, are able to copy more complex geo­metric designs.  As such, designers of primary-grade instructional pro­grams logically assume that it is feasible to employ visual stimuli of comparable complexity.

 

What is involved in a copying task? What does the “good” copier know that distinguishes him from the “poor” copier? For example, why does one six-year-old copy the asterisk, an item in the Rutgers Drawing Test (Starr, 1961), relatively accurately, while his classmate, also six years old, reveals gross inadequacy in the same task? Figure 3 portrays two contrasting responses.

 

       *                                                  +                     x

        Stimulus                                       Child A            Child B

 

 

Figure 3

 

Does child A literally see more clearly than child B--is that the cause of B's inadequate response? That is not very likely. The rela­tionship between visual acuity and copying skills is quite low (Rosner et al. , 1969). What else then? Distorted vision? -- does child B literally see the stimulus to be the way he has drawn it? Again, one cannot find support for such a notion in the currently available data.  Poor drawing skills? --does child B draw what he does because he cannot control the pencil? This is indeed quite possible. Motor skills, however, can be tested with simpler forms and, in most instances, do not appear to be the cause of poor copying skills.

 

Why, then? The reasonable proposition is that child A perceives the stimulus to be constructed of a finite number of elements (lines) that interrelate in a specific way.  Child B, on the other hand, perceives the stimulus to be constructed of a non-specific number of elements (lines) that interrelate in an imprecise manner.  Child B views the asterisk much like an adult views a tree in full leaf, or any other complex visual construction. Given the task of "copying" a tree in full leaf, the adult will sketch, or represent, the trunk, branches, and leaves; under normal cir­cumstances he cannot possible replicate the details--there simply are too many and their interrelationships are too intricate.

 

Child B's response indicates a representation rather than a repli­cation. As he acquires the capacity to "see" a finite number of lines and understand their interrelationships, he will more closely approximate a replication of the stimulus design. Such a capacity seems to depend upon certain basic skills. To "see" a finite number of lines implies a prior ability to sort out the elements--the salient attributes--of the design, either by discriminating them individually or by recognizing sub-assemblies of elements within the total pattern. At whatever level, the "sorting out" process can be enhanced by overt tactile-kinesthetic involvement (e.g., by tracing over the lines), and by verbal mediation (e.g., by counting the lines, by identifying them according to their spatial orientations, or by naming sub-assemblies--such as the  + that is embedded in the asterisk--that have been recognized within the total configuration).

 

To order those elements requires an additional skill--the child must be able to view the lines as though they were plotted on a map of spatial coordinates. For example, consider the effect of presenting the same task--copying the asterisk--with one exception. The addition of two spatial coordinates--one vertical, one horizontal--superimposed on the stimulus, and a matching set of coordinates on the response space.  (See Figure 4.)

 

 

Figure 4

 

 

Is it likely that the spatial interrelationships will be represented more accurately? Undoubtedly, given that the individual elements of the design had been recognized.

 

Let's go one step further. Again the asterisk is presented for copying, but this time it is superimposed by three vertical and three horizontal coordinates; matching coordinates are provided in the response space. (See Figure 5.)

 

 

Figure 5

 

 

Does the task of replication become less difficult? Certainly--much additional organizational support has been provided.

 

Yet one more step. Again the asterisk--this time it is superim­posed by five vertical and five horizontal coordinates, with matching coordinates provided in the response space. (See Figure 6.)

 

 

Figure 6

 

 

In this last format, the spatial interrelationships are fully dis­played. All cues are overt--nothing need be inferred.

 

Now, look at the original asterisk and describe it verbally.  You will use such spatial terms as "middle," "above, " "half-way, " "to the right," and so forth; terms that have no pertinence unless the space to which they relate has been defined by an implicit spatial coordinate map. It is reasonable, therefore, to assume that the copier who represents spatial inter relationships accurately, without additional organizational cues, is inferring such a map, using whatever other salient cues are available--such as the topological cues provided by the edges of the paper, and so forth.

 

In brief review, then, it has been proposed that growth and develop­ment normally provides the child with the capacity to analyze and repro­duce increasingly complex visual constructs, wherein the unit of analysis--the salient attributes of the construct--also becomes increasingly com­plex and the organizers increasingly effective. Thus, there is less de­pendency on overt tactile-kinesthetic involvement with the visual data as well as less dependency on overt organizational cues within the stimulus field itself. To test a child's visual-motor skills means scaling his per­formance along three dimensions: If his sensory-motor skills are appro­priately differentiated for his age, and if he displays no more need for overt tactile-kinesthetic cues and overt spatial cues than do his age peers, he will be judged as having demonstrated "normal" visual-motor skills. If his performance is less than satisfactory, the problem becomes one of determining where he was lacking--along which dimension(s) and to what degree.

 

Auditory-Motor Skills Development

 

Again, it is easier first to describe how auditory-motor skills are tested. Consider what is asked by most currently popular auditory perception tests. These, almost invariably, are discrimination tests that either ask for "same-different" responses to pairs of words, or ask the child to choose, from an array of three or four words, the two words that begin or end with the same consonant sound. None of these ask the testee to produce an acoustical construct; thus, none of these satisfy our criteria. Slingerland (1962) comes closer to our needs in the Echolalia subtest of her Test for Specific Language Disabilities. In this subtest, the child is asked to repeat certain words--words that are more likely to reveal auditory reception or production sequencing confusions; for example, such words as: hospital (e.g., hopsital), spaghetti (e.g., piz­ghetti), animal (e.g., aminal), and philosophy (e.g., phisolody). Unfor­tunately, the Echolalia subtest does not seem to discriminate well among primary-grade children unless their problem is severe. In addition, the subtest contains a distinct bias in favor of the child whose background has exposed him to the test item words.

 

There will be extensive discussion regarding a more useful instru­ment later in this paper. In the meantime, what does inadequate perfor­mance on an auditory perceptual task indicate? Poor hearing acuity?--only rarely. Does the child literally not hear the discrete differences between two very similar words?-- such a statement would be very diffi­cult to support with available clinical audiological data. What, then? Re­call the illustration offered in the discussion of visual-motor skills. An inadequate visual perceiver was described as one who did not recognize that a visual construction was made up of a finite number of elements that interrelated in a specific manner. The description also fits the in­adequate auditory perceiver. To illustrate the situation, state aloud:

 

"Please sit down."

 

Although speakers' styles vary, it is probable that the words were generated as "pleasesitdown"--a continuous stream of sounds. Spoken phrases, though composed of separate words, are rarely uttered in a way that acknowledges their separateness.  They usually are blended together into a series of connected sounds. The responsibility for analyzing and organizing that stream of sounds into a series of words almost invariably falls to the listener. If that task cannot be perceived appropriately, the listener may be in much the same position as the in­dividual who hears, for the first time, the once popular song:

 

"mareseat­oatsanddoeseatoatsandlittlelambseativy."

 

As a stream of unorganized, meaningless sounds, recalling them is exceedingly difficult, if in fact even possible. If they cannot be recalled, then surely they cannot be organized according to semantic attributes; hence, meaningful informa­tion cannot be readily extracted from the sensations.

 

Most first-grade teachers have observed this phenomenon. Many a child has entered the first-grade classroom, having learned the "Alpha­bet Song, " perceiving "lmnop" as a single letter. The anecdotes about similar confusions with some of the phrases of the Lord's Prayer, the Pledge of Allegiance, and other verbal presentations that were learned by rote, are ubiquitous. In most instances, the situation is benign; the re­sult of a simple confusion that will not have a detrimental effect on learning. In some situations, however, the problem may be critical, and difficult to deal with because of the way in which acoustical information is typically presented, in contrast to visual.

 

Visual representations of speech, such as this printed sentence, follow certain rules. Individual manuscript letters are separated by small spaces; larger spaces separate the words.  Capital letters begin sentences; periods end sentences. A second line of print parallels the first line; the third follows the pattern, and so on. Order is maintained; organization is provided. The visual sensations are treated in an organ­ized way that enhances the viewer's chances for extracting information from the symbols. The burden for organizing a visual presentation does not rest solely on the perceiver; the presenter always shares in the task.

 

The rules are less precise and rigid in presenting acoustical messages. Certainly, the sounds must follow in some specific sequence, but they need not be organized to the same level as visual material. Much more variance is tolerated. Reflect upon the variety of speaking styles and speech patterns to which a child may be exposed in a school building!

 

It seems reasonable to suggest that the assumptions made regard­ing visual perception are applicable to auditory processing as well. To satisfy the auditory perceptual demands of a primary-grade instructional program, the child must recognize that spoken phrases consist of a finite series of phonic elements (salient attributes) that interrelate or occur in a specific way. Indeed, to master the basic decoding skills of reading, he must discriminate these phonic elements at the phoneme, rather than the word, level and be aware of the specific sequential relationships of those phonemes in a spoken word.

 

He must not only appreciate that the word "cat" is constructed with three visual symbols, but that its acousti­cal construction is the product of three blended phonemes. It is true, of course, that children can and do memorize a limited number of words; sight reading vocabularies are important and within the repertory of all readers.  However, no one can memorize all of the printed words of the language. At some point in the primary grades, regardless of the nature of the reading program used, sight-sound relationships must be developed at the phoneme level.

 

      Acoustical events, such as occur in speech, do not have spatial attributes. As such, the salient cues that, in a visual presentation, facilitate the inference of a spatial map of coordinates, are not pertinent to auditory processes. Phonic events occur along the dimension of time, not space. It is only when we represent speech with visual symbols that a spatial dimension is called for--one that varies according to the con­ventions of the specific culture (e.g., English: left to right; Hebrew: right to left). To provide some kind of a map for plotting phonic events, one must make available a structure that orders time. One such structure is rhythm; rhythm is organized time. Indeed, one reason why we tend to recall songs and poetry more efficiently than we do prose, even when there is no rhyming, is because of the overt cues--the orderliness--provided by the rhythm of the presentation. When there is also rhyme, the task becomes even easier; the regular pattern of salient acoustical attributes provides additional overt cues for organizing the sensations into meaningful sub-assemblies.

 

Thus, the rationale appears to be applicable to both visual and auditory perceptual skills development. To assess a child's auditory-motor skills means scaling his performance along three dimensions. If his ability to receive and generate articulated speech is appropriately dif­ferentiated for his age, and if he displays no more need for overt self-produced cues (in terms of vocalizing what he has heard) and for environment cues (in terms of requiring a more orderly presentation and/or visual mediation) than do his age peers, he will be judged as having dem­onstrated "normal" auditory-motor skills. If his performance is less than satisfactory, the problem becomes one of determining where he is lacking--along which dimension(s) and to what degree.

 

General-Motor Skills Development

 

           Although this topic was treated to some degree in the first section of the rationale, additional comments should now be made. General-motor skills refer to those gross and fine motor processes that appear to have some relationship with visual and auditory perception. These include such gross motor functions as balancing, hopping, and skipping, as well as the more refined behaviors called for in eye movements, vo­calizations, and digital manipulations.

 

           As has been frequently stated in this paper, there are two primary sources of support available to the perceiver: the cues provided by the environment and those that he produces himself. These latter have been related to the tactile-kinesthetic information that is available to the visual perceiver by making physical contact with what he sees, and to the auditory perceiver by vocalizing what he hears.  It is logical, then, that the more discrete these motor functions are, the more refined will be the sup­port derived through tactile-kinesthetic exploration of the sensory data.

 

           There is yet another viable speculation. It has been suggested that the child learns to organize two-dimensional space by inferring a set of spatial coordinates upon that space--by looking at visual patterns as though through a map of vertical and horizontal coordinates. It has been proposed that as the map becomes more differentiated--as more coordi­nates are added to it--more refined spatial relationships can be plotted. There appears to be some evidence that a positive relationship exists between the differentiation of body scheme, as demonstrated by such be­haviors as hopping or balancing on one foot, the refinement of the map that the child infers on visual patterns, and the way in which certain per­formance tasks are solved (Witkin et al., 1962).  The premise is that the more global the body scheme, the less differentiated the map of coordi­nates, and, thus, the less analytical the child's psychomotor skills.

 

The same proposition can also be extended to three-dimensional visual space. A strong argument can be made for the hypothesis that man organizes visual space on an inferred map of coordinates representing the three dimensions of vertical, horizontal, and relative distance from self (Gesell, Ilg, & Bullis, 1949). Spatial localizations are relatively accurately made in a lighted, well-defined space in which objects are positioned in an orderly fashion (e.g., a furnished room). They are more difficult to perform in a less well-defined space that contains few objects (e.g., an open field). They are most difficult--in fact, impossible--to perform accurately in an undefined space, containing no objects, and devoid of gravity (e.g., outer space) (Howard & Templeton, 1966). These observations can also be related to the proposed rationale. A well-de­fined space and the objects contained within it function as topological cues; the nodes from which the three-dimensional coordinates may be inferred. As the cues are removed, the viewer must infer those also; he must act as though they were present in the environment. Finally, when the very basic cue provided by gravity is removed, the viewer no longer has any basis from which to infer support, insofar as spatial localizations beyond arm’s reach are concerned.

 

Is this pertinent to classroom performance? Undoubtedly! From his first day in school, the child is asked to shift his gaze between var­ious points in the classroom space--the chalkboard, the wall, his desk, the teacher (in any number of locations), and so forth. To do this effi­ciently, he must direct his eyes accurately and make spatial judgments (particularly left to right directional shifts) with little, if any, overt tactile-kinesthetic involvement.  The accuracy with which a child directs his visual gaze, the way in which he is able to maintain fixation upon the pertinent targets, the efficiency with which he shifts visual attention from blackboard to desk to teacher--all oculomotor behaviors--are functions of the relative organization of his visual space. If he cannot organize that space, if he views it as an undefined mass containing a disordered array of an indeterminate number of objects, he will display inefficient oculomotor skills. If, on the other hand, he has the capacity to order the visual space of the classroom, if he can plot the relative positions of the various visual targets in that room (teacher, chalkboard, desk, etc.) on an inferred, refined three-dimensional map of coordinates, he is more likely to display parsimonious oculomotor behaviors.