Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 1998. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 148-158).

Thesis (M.S.)--Ohio State University, 2009. / Title from first page of PDF file. Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 41-46).

Thesis (doctoral)--Lund University, 1996. / Added t.p. with thesis statement inserted.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2004. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 177-187).

Thesis (doctoral)--Lund University, 1996. / Added t.p. with thesis statement inserted.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego and San Diego State University, 2007. / Title from first page of PDF file (viewed June 11, 2007). Available via ProQuest Digital Dissertations. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 171-178).

Thesis (M.A.)--Oregon State University, 2007. / Printout. Includes bibliographical references (p. 83-86). Also available on the World Wide Web.

D.Phil. / Efficient ocular saccadics with a clear visual memory are essential functions in reading fluently. A child needs to sequence the eyes in a controlled jump called a saccade in order to form a picture in the mind of what is being read. The child is therefore primarily aware of a story rather than individual words. This sequential visual input of the written text contributes to efficient reading skills. The letter sequencing therapy used in this research is designed to improve the ocular saccadics and also to simultaneously develop an efficient visual memory. This improves the reading skills and creates good comprehension. The above exercise program illustrated that visual therapy, in general, done not only as a physical exercise but by improving the visual memory, will integrate very quickly into a child's perceptual development. Visual therapy can therefore improve the learning skills in an effective and efficient manner. The development of learning skills can be expanded to benefit children that have poor reading skills as a result of cultural deprivation. Until recently, due to apartheid and cultural differences at the pre school level disadvantaged children were deprived of the same standard of education as advantaged children. This research compared the average visual skills in reading of educationally advantaged children to educationally disadvantaged children. This illustrated the gap created by apartheid, differences in culture and preschool stimulation in the two levels of education. 167 children with no particular learning or visual problems were randomly selected from a group of pupils at an average middle class educationally advantaged white school and an average middle class disadvantaged black school. 100 of the children came from two standard 2 and two standard 3 classes of the educationally advantaged school while 67 of the children came from one standard 2 and one standard 3 class of the educationally disadvantaged school. All the children were evaluated before the therapy program began with respect to ocular fixations, ocular regressions, reading rate, directional attack, span of recognition and relative efficiency. All the children were given letter sequencing therapy under supervision of the class teacher. Strict controls were applied.

Abstract Arthropod photoreceptors are versatile sense organs. Any investigation of these organs has to consider that their structure and functional limitations at the moment of fixation depend on many factors: species, sex, developmental and nutritional state of the animal, time of day and ambient light. The microscopic image of an arthropod photoreceptor is always a sample frozen in time and space. Quite often publications on arthropod photoreceptors only provide the name of the species studied, but nothing beyond that. At least the developmental status of the study animals ought to be noted, possibly even the sex and body size. Forty publications on insect and 54 on crustacean photoreceptors were checked for the information that was given about the investigated animals: Out of these papers 40% provide only information on the name of the studied species and nothing else. The aim of this thesis, thus, was to investigate, to what extent the developmental state and the sex of the animal as well as the ambient light conditions affect the structure of the eye of a given species. Five species of arthropods were chosen: (a) the semi-terrestrial isopod Ligia exotica and two aquatic Branchiuran fishlice, Argulus foliaceus and A. coregoni, to represent the Crustacea, and (b) the stick insect Carausius morosus and the spittle bug Philaenus spumarius, both terrestrial, to represent the Insecta. The addition of new ommatidia was studied in a paper on L. exotica, which also dealt with the site of newly added ommatidia. It was found that all of these species had two sessile, large compound eyes firmly positioned on their heads (but fishlouse compound eyes were bathed in haemocoelic liquid). In all species, the compound eye was found to be of the apposition type. The gross structural organization of the ommatidia stayed approximately the same during the whole post-embryonic development. Lateral ocelli of the A. coregoni nauplius eye changed from elongated to spherical between the metanauplius and the 8th stage pre-adult. The sex of the specimens was not found to affect the structure of the eye. In all species, it turned out that the larger the animal and hence the eye, the better its sensitivity. The addition of new ommatidia in the L. exotica compound eye was concluded to take place in the anterior and ventral marginal areas of the eye.

In their first year, infants’ ability to follow eye gaze to allocate attention shifts from being a response to low-level perceptual cues, to a deeper understanding of social intent. By 4 months infants look longer to uncued versus cued targets following a gaze cuing event, suggesting that infants better encode targets cued by shifts in eye gaze compared to targets not cued by eye gaze. From 6 to 9 months of age infants develop biases in face processing such that they show increased differentiation of faces within highly familiar groups (e.g., own-race) and a decreased differentiation of faces within unfamiliar or infrequently experienced groups (e.g., other-race). Although the development of cued object learning and face biases are both important social processes, they have primarily been studied independently. The current study examined whether early face processing biases for familiar compared to unfamiliar groups influences object encoding within the context of a gaze-cuing paradigm. Five- and 10-month-old infants viewed videos of adults, who varied by race and sex, shift their eye gaze towards one of two objects. The two objects were then presented side-by-side and fixation duration for the cued and uncued object was measured. Results revealed 5-month-old infants look significantly longer to uncued versus cued objects when the cuing face was a female. Additionally, 10-month-old infants displayed significantly longer looking to the uncued relative to the cued object when the cuing face was a female and from the infant’s own-race group. These findings are the first to demonstrate that perceptual narrowing based on sex and race shape infants’ use of social cues for allocating visual attention to objects in their environment.