Abstract
Few nonverbal developmentally disabled children ever receive adequate vision assessment because of their limited language skills. The present study details a simultaneous discrimination procedure for measuring subjective visual acuity in such children. A stimulus fading procedure was used to train a discrimination between Snellen Es differing in orientation, and a psychophysical tracking method was used to determine acuity thresholds. The procedure was tested with 11 nonverbal autistic and schizophrenic children and validated with four nonpsychotic children. Eight of the psychotic children were successfully examined in one to three sessions. Two of these children were identified as having significant acuity losses. The validity assessment showed that the experimental procedure resulted in thresholds equal to or slightly lower than those obtained with the Illiterate E chart.
Full text
PDF
Selected References
These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.
- Blough P. M. The visual acuity of the pigeon for distant targets. J Exp Anal Behav. 1971 Jan;15(1):57–67. doi: 10.1901/jeab.1971.15-57. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Cornsweet T. N., Crane H. D. Training the visual accommodation system. Vision Res. 1973 Mar;13(3):713–715. doi: 10.1016/0042-6989(73)90034-5. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Fellows B. J. Chance stimulus sequences for discrimination tasks. Psychol Bull. 1967 Feb;67(2):87–92. doi: 10.1037/h0024098. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Fields L., Bruno V., Keller K. The stages of acquisition in stimulus fading. J Exp Anal Behav. 1976 Sep;26(2):295–300. doi: 10.1901/jeab.1976.26-295. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Koegel R. L., Rincover A. Some detrimental effects of using extra stimuli to guide learning in normal and autistic children. J Abnorm Child Psychol. 1976;4(1):59–71. doi: 10.1007/BF00917605. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- LIPSITT L. P. Simultaneous and successive discrimination learning in children. Child Dev. 1961 Jun;32:337–347. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8624.1961.tb05032.x. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- LOESS H. B., DUNCAN C. P. Human discrimination learning with simultaneous and successive presentation of stimuli. J Exp Psychol. 1952 Sep;44(3):215–221. doi: 10.1037/h0061719. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Macht J. Examination and reevaluation of prosthetic lenses employing an operant procedure for measuring subjective visual acuity in a retarded child. J Exp Child Psychol. 1970 Oct;10(2):139–145. doi: 10.1016/0022-0965(70)90066-4. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Macht J. Operant measurement of subjective visual acuity in non-verbal children. J Appl Behav Anal. 1971 Spring;4(1):23–36. doi: 10.1901/jaba.1971.4-23. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Schover L. R., Newsom C. D. Overselectivity, developmental level, and overtraining in autistic and normal children. J Abnorm Child Psychol. 1976;4(3):289–298. doi: 10.1007/BF00917765. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Schreibman L. Effects of within-stimulus and extra-stimulus prompting on discrimination learning in autistic children. J Appl Behav Anal. 1975 Spring;8(1):91–112. doi: 10.1901/jaba.1975.8-91. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Schusterman R. J. Attention shift and errorless reversal learning by the California sea lion. Science. 1967 May 12;156(3776):833–835. doi: 10.1126/science.156.3776.833. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Touchette P. E. Transfer of stimulus control: measuring the moment of transfer. J Exp Anal Behav. 1971 May;15(3):347–354. doi: 10.1901/jeab.1971.15-347. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]