The purpose of the present study was to investigate the degree to which foveal information is necessary for object identification. To explore this question, we used an artificial moving scotoma paradigm to eliminate a region of a currently viewed display in real time as a function of eye position. Subjects examined linear arrays of four line drawings of objects while their eye movements were recorded. Immediately following each array, a test probe was presented to test the degree to which the subject had identified those objects. Three conditions were compared, one in which a central foveal scotoma was created, one in which an extrafoveal scotoma was created, and a control condition in which the scotoma was absent. The main result was that identification accuracy was very good, but eye-movement behavior was disrupted when a foveal scotoma was present. These results suggest that foveal information is not necessary but is beneficial for perceptual encoding during object identification; the loss of foveal information can be overcome as long as compensatory extrafoveal processing is possible.

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Subsyllabic awareness was investigated with a word synthesis task. Children from kindergarten, 1st grade, and 2nd grade attempted to blend auditorily presented CCVC word segments (where C = consonant and V = vowel) to produce words. Subsyllabic segmentation and presentation rate of the word segments were varied, and the dependent measure was percentage correct in each condition. Several posttests were administered to measure the children's preexisting ability to recognize visually presented consonants, consonant clusters, rimes, and words. Second graders performed better than 1st graders, who in turn performed better than kindergarteners. Performance of all children was best on words that were segmented between onset and rime and poorest for words that were segmented into individual phonemes. Performance for word segments that were presented at the fast rate was better than for those presented at the slow rate. The authors suggest that preliterate children are able to manipulate suprasegmental units such as onset and rime, and that those units should be emphasized in early reading instruction.A central question in cognitive development is how children learn to read (Curtis, 1980;MacLean, Bryant, & Bradley, 1987;Perfetti, Beck, Bell, & Hughes, 1987;Stanovich, 1986). To address this question, we found it necessary to examine the types of knowledge and strategies that are essential to beginning readers' performance and how both may change as reading fluency develops. For example, at the earliest stages of reading development, it may be necessary for children to acquire knowledge of the orthographic structure of their language and to develop strategies to map that structure onto existing knowledge about the language's phonological structure. Consistent with this notion, researchers have found that awareness and processing of the phonological features of English are important during the acquisition of early reading skill (Liberman & Shankweiler, 1979; for a review, see Wagner & Torgesen, 1987).In one study, Stanovich, Cunningham, and Cramer (1984)

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