Reading Readiness and its Relation to Maturational Unreadiness as Measured by the Spiral Aftereffect and other Visual-Perceptual Techniques

Abstract

The Spiral aftereffect (SAE), the Necker Cube, and the Schroeder Staircase were the principal visual-perceptual techniques used to investigate the incidence of perceptual immaturity among 667 first grade children of essentially normal intelligence who were individually tested. Depending upon the nature and complexity of the task, from 25 to 80% were unable to report experiencing a perceptual phenomenon which 100% of non-brain-damaged 10-yr.-olds report. Educational implications are cited and an emphasis is made upon maturational unreadiness at the first grade level as a major contributor to later reading disability. Norms and base rates for various SAE functions are presented by age, sex, socio-economic, reading-readiness and Bender-Gestalt test groupings. Similar findings are reported for the Necker and Schroeder reversing phenomena. Comparisons are made between previous SAE findings for adults and present findings for children. The potential utility of the SAE as an educational-diagnostic tool is emphasized. An implication of the over-all findings is that many children of normal intelligence are not ready to begin reading in the first grade.