AN EXPERIMENTAL STUDY ON LETTER PERCEPTION OF PARTIALLY SEEING CHILDREN

Abstract

One of most important purposes in educating the partially seeing is to develop their visual perception. So it is necessary to clarify the qualities of visual perception of the partially seeing. This study was carried out to clarify the qualities of letter perception of partially seeing children. The visual objects used in the experiment were Japanese alphabets "hiragana" and figures. And the scores obtained were discussed with reference to near vision, intelligence, and visual experience. The subjects of this experiment were 103 partially seeing children of age from 6 to 15 in schools for the blind. The main results obtained are as follows: 1) Letter pereception of partially seeing children is remarkably influenced by their visual acuity. So ability of letter perception of partially seeing children is almost determined by their visual acuity. 2) One letter recognition is influenced only by visual acuity. 3) When the number of letters given increases, influence of intelligence and visual experience becomes more effective. 4) Intelligence has greater influence upon perception of meaning syllables than upon perception of meaningless syllables. 5) In visual perception of meaning syllables, children with higher intelligence perceive them better than children with lower intelligence. 6) Visual experience also has a little influence upon letter perception. 7) These results indicates that the more complicated the objects perceived are, the more effective influence of factors other than visual acuity becomes.