PubMed Health⌕ Search

Biomedical subjects

T S Ball

Publications and source records attributed to T S Ball.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1985

Flexible arm splints in the control of a Lesch-Nyhan victim's finger biting and a profoundly retarded client's finger sucking.

Flexible arm splints permit the control of hand-to-mouth contacts without restricting range of motion. In the present study they effectively suppressed the self-injurious finger biting of a child with Lesch-Nyhan disease and a profoundly retarded client's stereotypic finger sucking. They appear to offer an easily applied and much less restrictive alternative to the soft-tie and tubular arm restraints in common use.

Adult↗
PubMed1985

Shaping self-initiated toileting in infants.

We evaluated a method for training infants to cue their mothers on the need to eliminate. The program consisted of three phases: Phase I was directed at establishing a close temporal relationship between body signals (straining) and subsequent defecations on the potty; Phase II was designed to establish a relationship between prompted and unprompted potty reaching/grabbing responses and eliminations (defecations and urinations) on the potty; and Phase III served to establish unprompted potty reaching/grabbing responses as reliable precursors of eliminations. Four babies, between 3.1 and 6.6 months old, all completed the training before age 1 year, with no negative side effects.

Behavior Therapy↗
PubMed1982

Reverse-process sinistral cursive in dextrads: a mirror-writing variant.

A loop executed clockwise in conventional (left to right) cursive writing is performed counterclockwise in classical (right to left) mirror writing. This rotational reversal appears integral to and inseparable from the mirror-writing phenomenon. Yet in Reverse Process Sinistral Cursive, which proceeds left to right, the rotational component escapes its embeddedness in the conventional mirror form and finds individual, overt expression. The product represents a compromise between the competing and often contradictory demands of innate rotational tendencies, legibility, continuity of movement, and conventional writing style. In dextrads, it reflects difficulty in meeting the unaccustomed demands of translating right-sided movement patterns into left-handed writing performance.

Dominance, Cerebral↗
PubMed1978

Brushing and physiological arousal.

Short-term (GSR orienting response) and longer-term changes in skin conductance were used to test the widely held belief that brushing enhances physiological arousal. Although the whirling brush did not make contact with the skin of control subjects, the degree of arousal produced by the incidental visual, auditory and social stimuli did not differ significantly from that produced by the actual brushing of experimental subjects.

Adult↗
PubMed1975

Automated reinforcement of head posture in two cerebral palsied retarded children.

A transistor radio activated by a mercury switch was used to reinforce head posture in two retarded children with severe cerebral palsy. Under the contingent music condition dropping the head forward automatically terminated the broadcast (music). A comparison of baseline and treatment phases showed that head orientation was strongly controlled by contingent music.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1975

Galvanic skin response orienting response as a measure of tactile discrimination in retarded children.

The GSR orienting reflex has been successfully applied to the measurements of normal and disordered tactile sensation and perception in nursery-school children, college students, and brain-injured adults. Because the technique eliminates practically all of the cognitive requirements of conventional measurement procedures, it provides a potential approach for measuring somato-perceptual abilities in the younger, language deficient, and more severely retarded child. In the present study the feasibility of the technique was evaluated by applying it to the discrimination of touches to the soles of the feet. In this simple discrimination, the retarded children performed as well as a control group of nonretarded children.

Child↗
PubMed1975

Reinforcement of cooperation between profoundly retarded adults.

An experimental approach to the development and maintenance of cooperation responses in profoundly retarded institutionalized male adults was evaluated in this study. A single-subject reversal design was used for the major experiment which involved automatic recording of cooperative responses. Within a relatively short period, 7 dyads learned independent operation of the cooperation machine. During the first reinforcement period, a high and fairly stable rate of cooperative responding occurred which decreased markedly after several extinction sessions and immediately recovered when reinforcements were reinstituted. The operation of such machines by profoundly retarded subjects resulted in increased social interaction beyond purely mechanistic behavior.

Adult↗