Visual-motor Skills: Response Characteristics and Prereading Behavior

Abstract

Assumed facets of kindergarten subjects’ visual-motor skill were studied by an analysis of the interrelationships in response characteristics to a set of geometric forms. Implications for initial response to letterforms (reading readiness) is discussed. Two measures of intersensory equivalence were used with the stimulus perceived through the sense of active touch (haptics). Stimulus characteristics—contour, closure, size, rotation and embeddedness—were varied in five visual-discrimination subtexts. Kindergarten subjects’ V-M skill is significantly related to achievement in intersensory equivalences and in visual discrimination of geometric forms.