Every day in classrooms throughout the country one can find children experiencing visual discrimination problems. One can also find a massive amount of teaching effort directed towards correcting those same problems, too often with limited success. Recent research has raised many questions about the usefulness of the most popular commercially available training materials (i.e. Frostig, Kephart, Michigan Tracking). However, research has also identified useful techniques that classroom teachers might employ

Allington, Richard

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Reading Horizons: A Journal of Literacy andLanguage ArtsVolume 15Issue 4 July 1975 Article 67-6-1975Using Visual Highlighting to TeachDiscriminations and PatternsRichard AllingtonState University of New York at AlbanyFollow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/reading_horizonsPart of the Education CommonsThis Article is brought to you for free and open access by the SpecialEducation and Literacy Studies at ScholarWorks at WMU. It has beenaccepted for inclusion in Reading Horizons: A Journal of Literacy andLanguage Arts by an authorized editor of ScholarWorks at WMU. For moreinformation, please contact maira.bundza@wmich.edu.Recommended CitationAllington, R. (1975). Using Visual Highlighting to Teach Discriminations and Patterns. Reading Horizons: A Journal of Literacy andLanguage Arts, 15 (4). Retrieved from https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/reading_horizons/vol15/iss4/6USING VISUAL HIGHLIGHTING TO TEACH DISCRIMINATIONS AND PATTERNS Richard Allington STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK AT ALBANY Every day in classrooms throughout the country one can find children experiencing visual discrimination problems. One can also find a massive amount of teaching effort directed to\vards correcting those same problems, too often with limited success. Recent research has raised many questions about the usefulness of the most popular commercially available training materials (i.e. Frostig, Kephart, Michigan Tracking). However, research has also identified useful techniques that classroom teachers might employ. The theoretical base for the methods discussed herein is a process called visual search. When attempting to discriminate visually behveen two objects a search for the differences between the items occurs. For example, when attempting to identify a police vehicle, many peo-ple look for one of the many distinctive features that can be used (e.g. the colored warning on the roof; the distinctive color or markings). These gross featural differences make identification quite easy. HO\v-ever, if one is attempting to identify an unmarked police vehicle the task is more difficult. In other \vords, finer discriminations are re-quired. The lack of success in this discrimination can often be proven on the nation's highways. The point is, whenever one attempts to dif-ferentiate between the objects, distinctive features play an important role. Research has demonstrated that there are differences between the search processes employed by good and poor readers. The primary finding being that good readers know how and where to focus atten-tion, while poor readers apparently do not. That is, poor readers use ineffective cues such as initial letter; word shape; or word length when attempting to identify isolated words. Good readers search out the effective cues and employ them in making discriminations. Thus, re-search has identified what many teachers have long known; poor readers mix up familiar words which are highly similar. For example, they mix up such words as (went-want, what-that, where-there, was-saw) . rh-217 The strategy for correcting these errors must be one that assists the poor reader in doing what seemingly comes naturally for good readers: identification of distinguishing or distinctive features. A promising strategy for accomplishing this is the use of color cues. Several research studies have demonSitrated the usefulness of using a single color to highlight or emphasize those features to which the learner mus·t attend. Either a technique of underlining or printing the distinctive features in the color chosen seem to benefit the learner by focusing attention where it is most useful. Whether the object to be discriminated is a letter, word, or shape this type of assistance facili-tates learning. In daily classroom practice, the teacher may want to provide these ccntrasts when introducing new words to eliminate errors from the outset. The teacher might also employ this strategy to correct errors as they occur in reading situations. In either case several rules of thumb are wise to follow. First, make sure you have identified the features that are relevant to the task. Color highlighting can be used to identify similarities as well as differences. Whether one wants the learner to notice that want and went differ in the second letter, or that hat) cat and fat each end in the same pattern, color cues will facilitate focusing student attention. Second, pairing words or letters with separate colors may be detri-mental to learning. That is, the child may learn to identify the stimu-lus on the basis of color alone without identifying the desired features. Training programs which provide multiple color cues have generally been ineffective. The learners respond to the color rather than the letter or word. Third, color cues can facilitate identification of distinctive fea-tures and discriminations, but not all students who mix up similar words need this type of training. Many learners can discriminate went /want but still confuse them when reading. Thus, the basic task here is teaching the child to associate the correct verbal response with the visual symbol. A teacher who is confused as to which problem a student may have can use this simple test. Provide the learner with a string of the two letters or words to be discriminated. Generally, three of one and one of the other such as want went want want. Now ask the child to mark the one that is different. If this task is completed correctly, the teacher can assume the child can discriminate between the stimuli but has not developed the correct verbal associations for each. Tasks which require the child to mark either a symbol repre-senting a spoken stimulus or to name or read a stimulus are association 218-rh tests not tests of visual discrimination. Similarly, discrimination train-ing is useless for those children who can discriminate but cannot as-sociate the correct verbal response. SUMMARY Color cues can be used to facilitate visual discriminations. How-ever, caution must be taken when supplying these cues. The teacher must also identify whether a discrimination error is the source of the problem. Further, color cues can be used to facilitate identification of patterns in words. For the teacher attempting to teach word patterns, color cues· can assist the student il1 identification of the necessary features. REFERENCES Allington, R. L. "Cue Selection and Discrimination Learning," A ca-demic Therapy, Vol. 10, No. 3 (Spring 1975 ), pp. 339-343. Egeland, B., and Winer, K. "Teaching Children to Discriminate Let-ters of the Alphabet Through Errorless Discrimination Training," Journal of Reading Behavior, Vol. VI, No. 2 (July 1974), pp. 143-150. Knafle, J. D. "Word Perception: Cues aiding structure detection," Reading Research Quarterly, Vol. VIII , No.4 (Summer 1973 ), pp. 502-523. Marchbanks, G., and Levin, H . "Cues by which Children Recognize Words," Journal of Educational Psychology, Vol. 56 (April 1965 ) , pp.57-61. Illustrative uses of color cues in discrimination training w~nt w[eJnt went wl!nt w[aJnt want ~as [w]as was .§;aW [sJaw saw 14 bJ b ~ [d d there th[ere] there three th[ree] th ree rh-219 Illustrative uses of color in identifying patterns pat r[ingJ land hat th[ing] band cat w[ingJ hand rat~ [m]ouse swing fat~ [mJan sweet lat~ [mJarble SWIm Tolhe aulhor (ap aralnlzlUan) You ARE INVITED to send for a free, illustrated brQchure which explains how your book (or your organiza-tion's) can be published, promoted and marketed. Whether your subject is fiction, non·fiction or poetry, scientific, scholarly, spe-cialized (even inSearehOI a publisher controversial) this handsome 52- page bro-chure will show you how to ar-range for prompt publica-tion. Unpublished authors, especial-ly, will find this booklet valuable and informative. For your free copy, or more information, write: Vantage Press, Inc., Dept. D - 73 516 W. 34 St., New York, N. Y. 10001 

Using Visual Highlighting to Teach Discriminations and Patterns

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Using Visual Highlighting to Teach Discriminations and Patterns

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