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Results for “Persons with Visual Disabilities”

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PubMed1979

Specificity and differences in three methods of assessing trainable mental retardates' reaction time.

The purposes of this study were to determine the specificity and differences in reaction time that exist among three manual methods of measurement. This dependent variable was measured from onset of a light stimulus until activation of a microswitch by one of the following methods: depressing or releasing a panel-mounted button or depressing a hand-held button. A rotational order of testing was implemented with 35 trainable mentally retarded subjects. Data indicated marked specificity among the three methods; reaction times were significantly faster with the depressed and hand-held methods than with the released method.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1978

Fostering the object construct: large-scale intervention with handicapped infants.

Parents provided their developmentally delayed infants with sequential experiences intended to foster the development of the object construct. The participants were enrolled in a multidisciplinary early intervention program serving a wide spectrum of impaired infants from a large, rural geographic area. In comparison with infants who were not exposed to object-construct intervention, infants who received training performed moderately but significantly higher on Scale I of the Uzgiris-Hung Ordinal Scales of Psychological Development.

Child Development↗
PubMed1992

Attentional resource demands of stimulus encoding for persons with and without mental retardation.

Speed of encoding differences between individuals with and without mental retardation were examined to determine whether they stem from an automatically executed cognitive process or from encoding processes that require attentional resources. In Experiment 1, encoding functions were generated for physical identity and name identity encoding while subjects retained a full memory load or half memory load. Size of memory load influenced encoding times for all subjects. However, the pattern of group differences suggested that subjects with mental retardation allocated fewer attentional resources to encoding, even though encoding may require more of their resources for efficient execution. These conclusions were supported in Experiment 2, in which resource allocation was assessed using response times to auditory probes placed at various locations in the semantic encoding and decision task.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1992

Federal budgetary costs of blindness.

Federal expenditures for blindness-related disability among Americans are examined. The government, rather than the private sector, frequently bears the economic consequences of visual disability through entitlement and public assistance programs. Findings suggest an average $11,896 federal cost of a person-year of blindness for a working-aged American, which includes income assistance programs (SSDI/SSI), health insurance programs (Medicare/Medicaid), and tax losses resulting from reduced potential earnings. Almost 97 percent of the aggregate annual federal costs of blindness in 1990, which totaled approximately $4 billion, is accounted for by working-aged adults, who represent less than one-third of the total blind population. Approximately 25 percent of all blindness is attributed to preventable causes.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1979

A limitation on the law of effect.

Nineteen mildly or moderately retarded subjects were presented 32 oddity-training trials per day for 10 days with all new etimuli presented on each trial. Six subjects learned oddity, approaching an asymptote of 100 percent correct. Six others showed a strong preference (78 percent) for the odd stimulus but failed to improve. Seven remained in the performance range of 50 to 60 percent without improving. On eight trials per day, the two specific cues of an oddity display, chosen randomly, were presented alone as probes for specific-cue learning. Probe trials were above chance for all subjects. These results show that attention to the relevant dimension, demonstrated by oddity preference, plus adequate reinforcing conditions, indicated by specific-cue learning, did not ensure oddity learning. We concluded that subjects do not necessarily learn about the cues that control behavior. The operation of differential forgetting and/or rehearsal of relative vs. specific vs. specific cues was proposed as a likely explanation.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1993

Similarities in the detection of stimulus symmetry by individuals with and without mental retardation.

Intelligence-related differences in the detection of stimulus organization previously identified by Soraci, Carlin, Deckner, and Baumeister (1990) were examined further to determine whether they would (a) extend to similar checkerboard stimuli varying solely with respect to symmetry and (b) generalize to form-like polygon stimuli. Detection performances of 10 individuals with mild mental retardation, 10 CA-matched, and 10 MA-matched individuals were assessed on a rapid presentation a two-choice match-to-sample task. The organizations of the target and distractor stimuli were varied across four levels of symmetry: double, vertical, horizontal, and asymmetrical. Results indicated that detection rates for each group were highest when the target stimulus was vertically symmetrical or when target-distractor structural disparity was maximal. However, no significant main effects of subject group or stimulus type (i.e., checkerboard vs. polygon) were found, thereby arguing for the robustness of the symmetry effect across groups differing in intelligence and physically dissimilar stimulus types.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1991

Disability exaggeration as a predictor of functional restoration outcomes for patients with chronic low-back pain.

Many of the individual biological, psychological, and social factors attributed to low-back disability have been tested previously for their ability to predict treatment outcomes. To test the assumption that disability exaggeration affects treatment outcomes, models were developed to quantify this complex characteristic and to test its predictive value. Two hundred fifty-eight patients with chronic back disability entering a program of functional restoration were initially evaluated with a battery of tests, including measurements of trunk flexibility, lifting capacity, cycling endurance, self-assessments of pain and disability, and psychological attributes. On the basis of these measurements, patients were characterized as disability exaggerators if by peer comparison their self-assessments of pain and disability were in the most severe range despite high levels of physical capacity. Program completion and work status 1 and 2 years after treatment were compared between disability exaggerators and their peers. Individual initial attributes associated with program completion included pain intensity and Million Visual Analogue scores, lifting capacity, trunk flexibility, some Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory and Million Behavioral Health Inventory scales, and cigarette smoking. One-year re-employment was associated with Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory Scale 8, Wechsler Adult Intelligence Score-Revised, and cycling endurance. There were no significant associations between any individual factor and 2-year work status. Only two of the 12 disability exaggeration models distinguished between program graduates and dropouts, and none of the models accurately predicted return to work following treatment. Prescription of intensive multidisciplinary treatment should not be denied on the basis of any individual patient attribute or of disability exaggeration, as measured in this study.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

Adult↗
PubMed1980

Visual probability learning of institutionalized profoundly retarded adult males.

Eighteen profoundly retarded men were given repeated presentations of a two-choice visual discrimination using a modified Wisconsin General Test Apparatus and two probabilistic reinforcement schedules counterbalanced for order. Individuals received 240, 70:30 trials and up to as many 100:0 trials; when schedules were shifted, majority/minority (A1/A2) designations were reversed. The 100:0 results indicated preshift mean terminal rates that approached the reinforcement level and postshift rates that were inhibited by prior 70:30 training. The 70:30 results indicate learning only for those given a particular stimulus as their a1: overmatching prior to the shift that was reduced by previous 100:0 training to the matching level. Learning failures were explaiined in terms of attention to a preferred stimulus and the need for more trials, and areas for further inquiry were suggested.

Adult↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Assessing same/different judgments in individuals with severe intellectual disabilities: a status report.

This report summarizes state-of-the-art approaches for assessing visual stimulus same/different judgments in individuals with severe intellectual disabilities. Methods are described that permit one to conduct assessments on a population-wide basis, excluding few if any participants due to failure to acquire necessary baseline performances. Methodological investigations summarized here indicate that one can obtain reliable same/different judgments with a variety of stimuli in virtually anyone for whom a basal score on the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test can be obtained. This approach includes judgments involving not only familiar, readily nameable stimuli, but also abstract two-dimensional forms of the type commonly used to minimize extraexperimental influences on performance. Taken together, recent findings lead to the conclusion that past studies have significantly under-estimated the capacity of participants with low MA scores to make same/different judgments. They also suggest a more general methodological approach that can potentially lead to more sensitive assessment of other behavioral capacities in this difficult-to-test population.

Attention↗
PubMed2003

Cross-national agreement on disability weights: the European Disability Weights Project.

BACKGROUND: Disability weights represent the relative severity of disease stages to be incorporated in summary measures of population health. The level of agreement on disability weights in Western European countries was investigated with different valuation methods. METHODS: Disability weights for fifteen disease stages were elicited empirically in panels of health care professionals or non-health care professionals with an academic background following a strictly standardised procedure. Three valuation methods were used: a visual analogue scale (VAS); the time trade-off technique (TTO); and the person trade-off technique (PTO). Agreement among England, France, the Netherlands, Spain, and Sweden on the three disability weight sets was analysed by means of an intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) in the framework of generalisability theory. Agreement among the two types of panels was similarly assessed. RESULTS: A total of 232 participants were included. Similar rankings of disease stages across countries were found with all valuation methods. The ICC of country agreement on disability weights ranged from 0.56 [95% CI, 0.52-0.62] with PTO to 0.72 [0.70-0.74] with VAS and 0.72 [0.69-0.75] with TTO. The ICC of agreement between health care professionals and non-health care professionals ranged from 0.64 [0.58-0.68] with PTO to 0.73 [0.71-0.75] with VAS and 0.74 [0.72-0.77] with TTO. CONCLUSIONS: Overall, the study supports a reasonably high level of agreement on disability weights in Western European countries with VAS and TTO methods, which focus on individual preferences, but a lower level of agreement with the PTO method, which focuses more on societal values in resource allocation.

Journal Article↗
PubMed1990

Personality dimensions in two types of learning-disabled children: a Rorschach study.

Children referred for psychoeducational assessment of learning disabilities (LDs) commonly receive the Rorschach test. yet little is known about the impact of LD on Rorschach response patterns. This study investigated Rorschach response patterns in two groups of 9- to 12-year-old children (n = 41) classified by their respective intellectual abilities. Another group of 9- to 12-year-olds (n = 143) served as a nonclinical comparison group. Rorschach variables indicative of personality dimensions failed to discriminate between the two LD groups. Compared to the nonclinical group, the LD group exhibited several Rorschach characteristics--including problems in perceptual accuracy, inefficient visual scanning and problem-solving strategies, and avoidance of affect-laden stimuli--having implications for successful socioemotional adaptation. Suggestions for further research are discussed.

Adaptation, Psychological↗
PubMed2004

Effects of cataract type and location on visual function: the Blue Mountains Eye Study.

PURPOSE: To measure the effect of cataract type, severity and location on presenting, and best-corrected visual acuity, contrast sensitivity, and glare disability. METHODS: In all, 3654 (82.4% participation rate) eligible noninstitutionalised residents aged 49 years or older, living in two postcode areas of the Blue Mountains, Australia, received detailed eye examinations including visual acuity, contrast sensitivity, and glare disability testing. Data from right eyes were analysed using multiple regression modelling. RESULTS: The effect of age on visual acuity and contrast sensitivity only became evident in persons aged at least 60 years. Cataract severity was inversely related to visual acuity and contrast sensitivity. Late posterior subcapsular cataract caused the greatest reduction in visual acuity. Early grade cataract caused significant reduction in contrast sensitivity at intermediate and high spatial frequencies, but late grade cataract reduced contrast sensitivity across all spatial frequencies. There was insufficient study power to detect consistent significant effect of cataract on glare disability tests or cortical cataract location on visual function. CONCLUSIONS: Age at least 60 years, cataract type, and cataract severity were principal determinants of visual acuity and contrast sensitivity in this study. Axial and superotemporally located cortical cataract had the greatest effect on visual function tests.

Aged↗