ERIC Number: EJ731094
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2004
Pages: 27
Abstractor: Author
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0891-4222
EISSN: N/A
Assessing Visual Attention in Young Children and Adolescents with Severe Mental Retardation Utilizing Conditional-Discrimination Tasks and Multiple Testing Procedures
Huguenin, Nancy H.
Research in Developmental Disabilities: A Multidisciplinary Journal, v25 n2 p155-181 Mar-Apr 2004
To effectively reduce overselective attention, a fine-grained analysis of the control exhibited by compound training cues is first needed. Computer software was developed in this study to administer two different stimulus control-testing procedures to assess how three young children of normal development and three adolescents with severe mental retardation attended to stimulus compounds when conditional-discrimination tasks were provided. One test assessed stimulus control by determining response accuracy for each component of the S+ compounds. The other testing procedure measured the response topographies of the compound stimuli using a touch screen attached to a computer monitor screen. After pretraining each stimulus component, all three children attended simultaneously to two elements in a conditional-discrimination task with few errors occurring. The adolescents with mental retardation eventually attended to both elements simultaneously but required more pretraining and exposure to the conditional-discrimination tasks before simultaneous attention occurred. Since the adolescents with severe mental retardation learned to simultaneously attend to multiple cues in the conditional-discrimination tasks, this demonstrated that restricted attention is not an unmodifiable perceptual characteristic among individuals with developmental disabilities. Recording response topographies with a touch screen was also discovered to be a sensitive measure of stimulus preferences for both groups. Utilizing touch-screen technology may prove to be critical for accurately identifying stimulus preferences and contribute to the understanding and treatment of overselective attention in students with attentional deficits.
Descriptors: Attention Control, Visual Stimuli, Young Children, Adolescents, Severe Mental Retardation, Testing, Computer Software, Computers, Cues, Sensory Training
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A