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Group differences and individual classification accuracy associated with letter/word oddity problems.

The ability of 27 pairs of mildly mentally retarded and normally achieving 6- through 8-year-old students to apply an oddity rule to an experimental set of letter and word oddity problems was assessed. The mildly retarded group evidenced a markedly lower level of performance on all five experimental oddity problems, but they did evidence successful generalization to oddity arrays that visually were very different from those used in training. High levels (greater than 90%) of sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive accuracy, and negative predictive accuracy were observed using only six cards. Only slightly lower (greater than or equal to 85%) values were obtained when using a cut-off score. This subset of six cards is, therefore, an excellent candidate for inclusion in a cognitive preschool screening test being developed for the early detection of children with mild mental retardation.

Achievement↗

Disparities between ambient, standard lighting and retinal acuities in community-dwelling older people: Implications for disability.

OBJECTIVES: To examine three types of visual ability-ambient acuity, standard lighting acuity, and retinal acuity-and their relationship with self-reported disability. DESIGN: Cross-sectional prevalence survey. SETTING: New York, New York. PARTICIPANTS: Community-dwelling older people. MEASUREMENTS: Ambient acuity assessed using a near reading card; standard lighting acuity and retinal acuity assessed using the Retinal Acuity Meter. Difficulty in activities of daily living was assessed according to self-report. RESULTS: Mean logMAR acuities were 0.44 (20/56) for ambient acuity, 0.33 (20/44) for standard lighting acuity, and 0.19 (20/31) for retinal acuity (all pairwise differences, P < .001). Given the distribution of disability by ambient acuity in this sample, improving ambient acuity to the level of retinal acuity could potentially reduce self-care disability 22%. CONCLUSION: Better utilization of retinal acuity through optimal ophthalmologic care and improvement in lighting would likely reduce disability in older adults.

Activities of Daily Living↗

Electronic doors to education: study of high school website accessibility in Iowa.

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), and Sections 504 and 508 of the Rehabilitation Act, prohibit discrimination against people with disabilities in all aspects of daily life, including education, work, and access to places of public accommodations. Increasingly, these antidiscrimination laws are used by persons with disabilities to ensure equal access to e-commerce, and to private and public Internet websites. To help assess the impact of the anti-discrimination mandate for educational communities, this study examined 157 website home pages of Iowa public high schools (52% of high schools in Iowa) in terms of their electronic accessibility for persons with disabilities. We predicted that accessibility problems would limit students and others in obtaining information from the web pages as well as limiting ability to navigate to other web pages. Findings show that although many web pages examined included information in accessible formats, none of the home pages met World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) standards for accessibility. The most frequent accessibility problem was lack of alternative text (ALT tags) for graphics. Technical sophistication built into pages was found to reduce accessibility. Implications are discussed for schools and educational institutions, and for laws, policies, and procedures on website accessibility.

Persons with Disabilities↗

The use of picture cues to establish self-control in the preparation of complex meals by mentally retarded adults.

This investigation examined the effectiveness of picture cues in establishing self-control in the completion of complex meals by mildly and moderately retarded adults. Three participants, who lived in nonsheltered residential settings, were trained to prepare five complex meals. Following a training baseline comprised of pre-instruction, instructional feedback, and trainers' presence, picture recipe cards were introduced in a multiple-baseline fashion. Rapid improvement in the ability of each participant to independently complete each meal when the picture recipe cards were used occurred. A return to baseline for one of the participants demonstrated further self-directed antecedent stimulus control of the picture recipe cards as an effective treatment procedure. A discussion of future areas of research is included.

Adult↗

The Americans with Disabilities Act. Emerging issues for ophthalmologists.

BACKGROUND: The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 is the most comprehensive federal law to address discrimination against an estimated 49 million Americans in the areas of employment, governmental services, public accommodations, transportation, and telecommunications. METHODS: The authors describe title I of the Americans with Disabilities Act and examine the challenges of implementing the employment provisions set forth in this legislation as they relate to visual impairment and disability. CONCLUSIONS: It is crucial that ophthalmologists understand the implications of the Americans with Disabilities Act when caring for individuals with visual impairments and communicating with their employers and other healthcare specialists. Ophthalmologists play an increasingly important role in shaping public policy toward people with visual impairments.

Activities of Daily Living↗

Perceptions of an aggressive encounter as a function of the victim's salience and the perceiver's arousal.

Two studies were conducted to investigate the effects of a victim's physical salience and perceivers' arousal on perceptions of a verbally aggressive interaction. Based upon evidence that there is a tendency to attribute causality to salient stimulus persons and to form more evaluatively extreme impressions of such persons, it was predicted that an aggressor's behavior would be attributed more to causes in a physically salient than a nonsalient victim and that the behavior of a salient victim would be evaluated more extremely than that of a nonsalient victim. Based upon Easterbrook's hypothesis that arousal narrows the focus of attention to the most salient cues in the situation, it was further predicted that aroused perceivers would manifest both a stronger tendency to attribute causality to a physically salient victim of aggression and more extreme ratings of the stimulus persons than would nonaroused perceivers. The results supported all of the experimental hypotheses except one: The tendency to attribute the aggressor's behavior more to a physically salient than a nonsalient victim was not greater for aroused than for nonaroused perceivers.

Acoustic Stimulation↗

Enhancing free-recall rates of individuals with mental retardation.

Generative encoding contexts promote activation of multiple retrieval routes and have been shown to enhance free-recall rates of individuals without mental retardation. The present extension to individuals with mental retardation involved a comparison of two encoding conditions: (a) fade-in, initially presenting pictures out of focus then slowly fading them into focus, and (b) fade-out, presenting pictures clearly then slowly blurring them. Results indicated that free-recall rates were greater for the fade-in items for the individuals with mental retardation and CA-matched comparisons, but not for the MA-matched group. These findings demonstrate the utility of a generative encoding context that does not involve verbal instruction for individuals with and without mental retardation.

Adolescent↗

An analysis of error-correction procedures during discrimination training.

Mechanisms involved in error-correction procedures during behavioral acquisition were examined. Seven developmentally delayed subjects participated in match-to-sample discrimination training, consisting of three conditions arranged in a multielement design. Correct responses in all conditions were followed by praise and either food or pennies. In the baseline condition (differential reinforcement), an error produced no consequences. In the practice condition, an error was followed by repetition of the trial until a correct response occurred. In the avoidance condition, an error was followed by additional trials consisting of irrelevant stimuli; this condition separated the effects of repeated exposure to the same task from those of negative reinforcement, both of which existed in the practice condition. All 7 subjects made noticeable progress in the baseline condition. However, 5 of the 7 performed better in one of the error-correction conditions: 2 performed better in the practice condition, and 3 performed better in the avoidance condition. These data indicate that error-correction procedures may serve multiple functions and suggest that the practice requirement in this study included both avoidance and stimulus control components. More generally, the data indicate that additional control procedures should be included in acquisition studies to identify the relevant behavioral mechanism(s).

Adult↗

Written lists as mediating stimuli in the matching-to-sample performances of individuals with mental retardation.

Students with mental retardation learned to write lists in order to perform a matching task that they could not do otherwise. After an initial assessment phase, reinforcement was arranged in the computerized tasks to follow selection of the six pictures that were identical to those in the six-picture samples presented. In Study 1, even though the participants wrote a list of the names of the six sample pictures on each trial, read a list, or did both, they often made errors when a brief delay preceded picture selection. In contrast, performance was nearly perfect when a list was written, read, and remained available at the time of picture selection, suggesting that the list served to mediate the delays. Study 2 examined the stimulus control by two- and six-picture samples over the list writing. Early during testing, 1 participant refrained from writing lists on two-picture trials but wrote lists on six-picture trials, thereby maximizing reinforcement and minimizing its delay; the other participant showed this pattern of list writing after supplemental training. The studies suggest methods for establishing a rudimentary repertoire of mediating behavior that has relevance for teaching instruction-following skills in natural settings.

Achievement↗

Teaching arbitrary matching via sample stimulus-control shaping to young children and mentally retarded individuals: a methodological note.

Two experiments demonstrated the efficacy of sample stimulus-control shaping programs for teaching arbitrary matching to 4 subjects who did not acquire the performances via standard methods (i.e., differential reinforcement and, in two cases, comparison intensity fading). All 4 had previously demonstrated identity matching with two-dimensional forms. Identity matching performances were then transformed into arbitrary matching by gradually changing the sample stimuli until they no longer resembled the comparison stimuli. Where applicable, these methods may have advantages over others that have been used after the failure of standard techniques.

Adolescent↗

Teaching students with mental retardation and other disabilities to make simple drawings through a computer system and special cards.

3 students with mental retardation and other disabilities were trained to make simple drawings on a computer screen (with a light-pen) following the color sequence used for the same drawings on special cards. The screen provided immediate feedback on the students' drawing accuracy. Teachers rated the students' posttraining drawings much higher than the pretraining ones.

Attention↗

Instruction on Piagetian concepts for children with mental retardation.

Eighteen children with mild mental retardation were pretested on unidimensional classification (oddity), unidimensional seriation, number conservation, Slosson's Intelligence Test, and the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT). The children were instructed on the Piagetian concepts twice per week for 4 months via a learning-set technique. All 315 problems (except 20 verbal classification and 15 verbal seriation items) involved concrete items. When posttested at the semester's end, the children had, with few exceptions, mastered the Piagetian concepts and made significant gains on performance on the PPVT.

Adolescent↗