Abstract
Purpose. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between visual memory for pseudographs and reading achievement, sex, and grade level in children in grades one, two, and three.Procedures. Subjects for the study were 300 primary grade children, equally divided by grade, sex, and reading level, selected from 7 elementary schools in Dade County, Florida. Good and poor readers were selected according to their Reading scores on the Stanford Achievement Test.All subjects were given the Word Recognition Test of the Botel Reading Inventory and the Visual Memory Assessment test, designed by the researcher to obtain a measure of visual memory of pseudographs (nonsymbolic figures).Analysis of variance for a 2 x 3 x 2 factorial design was performed.Findings. The findings revealed that good readers performed significantly better (p .05) on the visual memory measure than poor readers at each grade level and that children at higher grade levels performed significantly better (p .05) on the visual memory measure than children at lower grade levels. The performance between boys and girls on the visual memory measure was not significantly different.Conclusions. While the results of the study indicated a significant positive relationship to exist between performance on the visual memory measure and both grade and reading level, caution should be used in drawing implications concerning causality or educational treatment relating to visual memory deficits. The restrictions placed upon administration of intelligence and modality assessment tests presented certain limitations on the study in terms of the level of control for factors relating to reading achievement.This research should be regarded primarily as an exploratory effort to study the relationship between visual memory for pseudographs and the factors of grade, sex, and reading levels, using the Visual Memory Assessment.