Learning to Look: Cognitive Aspects of Visual Attention

Early visual orienting responses can be prevented in infants with central nervous system damage. Children who have extensive damage in the visual system may ignore whatever visual stimuli they receive. Other children who have a viable visual system may receive the stimuli, but have difficulty with perceiving, interpreting or acting on incoming stimuli. If experience is lacking, visual behavior may never develop. The development of visual pathways seems to depend on experience as well as physiological factors. Intervention must be planned to help multihandicapped children integrate what they see with what they know. Where there is a deficit in the sensory mechanism, repeated stimula­tion is necessary in order for the brain to receive and process visual stimuli. Visually impaired multihan­dicapped children do learn to visually attend and process visual information

An evaluation of the effects of a hospital unit on the development of multiply handicapped children

The evidence in this study appears to indicate that adopting a goal-planning approach can provide demonstrable and clear improvements in the developmental functioning of multiply handicapped blind children. However, while the improvements in functioning for self-help and sensorimotor abilities are quite significant, those for communication and language skills are much less so. Three possible hypotheses have been advanced as to why this should be so. The hypothesis that the setting might be an institutionalizing one was rejected on the grounds that some of the evidence did not fit with that from other populations. The second hypothesis referred to the lack of formal speech and communication training on the unit. The best possible test of this hypothesis would be to employ a speech therapist to work on the unit and support for such a scheme is being sought. Finally, it was hypothesized that the way in which the staff interacted with the children was not being sufficiently modified to take account of the children's handicaps

Parent-reported problem behavior among children with sensory disabilities attending elementary regular schools

Parent-reported problem behaviors of 94 children with visual and auditory disabilities, attending elementary regular schools, were compared with problems reported in a general population sample of nondisabled children. Both samples were matched by means of a pairwise matching procedure, taking into account age and sex. Problem behavior was measured by Achenbach's (1991) CBCL (Achenbach, T. M. (1991). Manual for the Child Behavior Checklist/4-18 and 1991 Profile, University of Vermont, Department of Psychiatry, Burlington, VT). No significant main effects of type, degree, and nature of disability were found on the CBCL Total Problems scale, nor on the syndrome scales. In general, children with sensory disabilities attending elementary regular schools did not show more problems in comparison to nondisabled children. Merely on the Social Problems scale there was a significant difference between both samples, the children with sensory disabilities getting higher scores than their nondisabled peers. Further, children with sensory disabilities ran considerable risks of developing deviant scores on the Social Problems and the Thought Problems syndromes, the odds being respectively 3.2 and 5.2 times higher than in the general population sample. To optimize the benefits from placement in integrated classrooms for children with sensory disabilities, school counselors and teachers should not only focus on the academic achievements of these children, but also on their social skills and peer sociometric status