IMAGE AND PERCEPTUAL REPRESENTATION OF WORDS IN LEARNING DISABLED AND

Abstract. Results of the present study indicated that learning disabled and nor-mal children (X age = 111.4 months) process letters in words in either perceptual or imaginal modes for the attribute letter height. A large processing time effect was noted for mode of representation with perceptual representations of letters pro-cessed more rapidly than imaginal representations. There was also a subject-type-by-processing mode interaction. The results indicate that LD and normal children do not differ in perceptual processing time; however, LD children have a smaller image capacity than normals. Correlational results also suggest that the imaginal mode is more independent of other modes for normals than for LDs. Many terms such as specific learning dis-ability, dyslexia, and reading retardation have been used to label otherwise normal children who are slow at mastering reading (Ross, 1976; Haring & Bateman, 1977). Learning disabled children's reading problems have been attributed to a variety of causes (Critch