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Results for “Persons with Visual Disabilities”

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PubMed1985

Functions of haptic perceptual activity in persons with visual and developmental disabilities.

The paper reviews the author's research on the effects of perceptual experience and cognitive-developmental factors on haptic scanning behavior of blind and/or mentally retarded children and adults. The results indicate that haptic information may be gathered more efficiently by one scanning style over another, and differences in efficient style usage may vary positively with haptic perceptual experience. However, accurate processing of haptic information may depend on the availability of cognitive structures that in turn influence scanning style selection and utilization, rather than directly on scanning styles themselves.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1983

[Problems and disabilities resulting from tumors of the central nervous system].

100 patients of the neurological clinic of the University of Cologne affected by tumors of the brain or spinal cord, had been interviewed according to a catalogue of disabilities developed on the lines of the WHO classification of impairments, disabilities, and handicaps. Two months later, 55 patients who had had a previous disease history of less than 12 months, again reported on the course of their disease and the difficulties they experienced. Most of them in their middle years, the patients studied were disabled to very different degrees, the majority of them experiencing greater or lesser limitations in almost all areas of life. The occurrence of individual disabilities, above all visual impairments, personal care disabilities, of locomotion, manual activity, and disorders of balance, was found to be dependent on patient age and tumor diagnosis, whereas disease duration appeared to have little impact.

Adult↗
PubMed2004

Consistent mapping and automatic visual search: comparing persons with and without intellectual disability.

BACKGROUND: Merrill et al. (1996) reported that persons with intellectual disability (ID) were slower at learning a visual search task to automaticity relative to persons of the same age without ID. For persons without ID, automaticity develops most rapidly under conditions in which a response is always the same for a particular stimulus. This study was designed to investigate whether persons with and without ID are differentially sensitive to the influence of consistently mapped versus inconsistently mapped stimulus responses. METHODS: The primary manipulation was the consistency between a particular stimulus and the response to that stimulus in a visual search task. Sixteen participants with ID and 16 without ID searched displays of two, three, or four pictured objects to determine if a target was present. For half of the participants, the targets were always targets. For the other half, the targets became nontargets on 25% of the trials. RESULTS: Analyses focused on changes in response times associated with set size. Because automaticity allows for parallel processing, the elimination of significant effects of set size was taken as an index of the development of automaticity. Results indicated that inconsistent mapping significantly slowed the development of automaticity for the participants without ID but not for the participants with ID. DISCUSSION: Results were discussed in terms of the role of inhibition processes in the development of automatic search and detection. The effectiveness of inhibition processes was compromised by the consistency manipulation. The effect of the consistency manipulation was greater for the participants without ID because they were presumed to be using inhibition processes more effectively during practice than did the participants with ID.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1993

The relationship of visual and hearing impairments to disability: an analysis using the longitudinal study of aging.

BACKGROUND: Little is known about the relationships of visual impairment and hearing impairments to physical disability. The purpose of this work is to determine if persons 70 years of age and over with these impairments are at risk for increased disability in basic physical activities of daily living (ADLs) compared to persons without these impairments. METHODS: We used as our data source the baseline (1984) and the 1988 reinterview from the Longitudinal Study of Aging, a nationally representative survey of noninstitutionalized persons 70 years of age and older. To determine the relationships of visual impairment and hearing impairment to future four-year disability, we used multiple variable modeling, controlling for demographic variables, selected chronic conditions, and baseline disability. RESULTS: Persons with visual impairment were 1.37 (95% CI:1.20-1.57) times more likely to have increased disability in ADLs than those without visual impairment. Hearing impairment was not independently related to increased ADL disability. CONCLUSIONS: Visual impairment by itself is an independent risk factor for future ADL disability. In light of the enlarging older population, maneuvers to ameliorate visual impairment may help to minimize the increase in numbers of disabled persons.

Activities of Daily Living↗
PubMed2004

Supplemental oxygen improves diabetic macular edema: a pilot study.

PURPOSE: Diabetic macular edema (DME) is the most common cause of moderate visual disability in persons of working age in the United States. The pathogenesis of DME is poorly understood. In this study, the effect of retinal hypoxia in the development and maintenance of DME was investigated. METHODS: Five patients with chronic DME despite at least one focal laser photocoagulation treatment (nine eyes) received 4 L/min of inspired oxygen by nasal cannula for 3 months. Best corrected visual acuity (VA) and retinal thickness, assessed by optical coherence tomography (OCT), were measured at baseline, during 3 months of oxygen treatment, and for 3 months after stopping oxygen. RESULTS: After 3 months of oxygen therapy, nine of nine eyes with DME at baseline showed a reduction in thickness of the center of the macula. Foveal thickness (FTH) above the normal range was reduced by an average of 43.5% (range, 14%-100%), excess foveolar thickness (CEN) was reduced by an average of 42.1% (range, 13%-100%), and excess macular volume was reduced by an average of 54% (range, 35%-100%). Statistical analyses suggested that these changes were unlikely to be due to chance (P = 0.0077 by Wilcoxon signed-rank test). Three eyes showed improvement in VA by at least 2 lines, one by slightly less than 2 lines, and five eyes showed no change. Three months after discontinuation of oxygen, five of the nine eyes showed increased thickening of the macula compared with when oxygen was discontinued. CONCLUSIONS: Supplemental inspired oxygen may decrease macular thickness due to DME, suggesting that retinal hypoxia is involved in the development and maintenance of DME.

Aged↗
PubMed1995

"The Reading Assistant": user-friendly technology for the visually impaired.

One important way in which optometry must respond to the needs of persons with visual disabilities is to develop innovative applications of technologies that will allow these people to function productively in the workplace, where their performance depends on the ability to read at reasonable rates: to read such documents as letters, memos, contracts, instruction manuals, newspapers, magazines, and the like. In this paper I will describe one example of such an effort, a system that is being developed jointly by the SUNY College of Optometry, the National Eye Institute, and MerlinVision Industries, Inc., a company in Yorktown Heights, NY. I have an interest in what is reported here: I hold a part-time position as Director of Clinical Research at MerlinVision.

Humans↗
PubMed2006

Perceptions of teachers and parents on the cognitive functioning of children with severe mental disability and children with congenital deafblindness.

This article reports Phase I results of a questionnaire study on the perceptions of US teachers and parents on the cognitive functioning of children with severe mental disability and children with congenital deafblindness, ages 4-12 years. Teachers were more likely than parents to report emerging skills and to provide examples of how the skill was being taught. Teachers and parents of children with severe mental disability had different perceptions about how children demonstrated understanding of cause-effect, object permanence, memory, incidental cues, reasoning and creativity. Teachers and parents of children with congenital deafblindness differed in their perceptions of how children demonstrate understanding of incidental cues and exhibit reasoning. Both teachers and parents expressed concern about whether choice making was meaningful. Novelty was reported to be a motivating factor for children with severe mental disability, while familiarity was cited as motivating for children with congenital deafblindness. Teachers and parents of all children cited consistency, routine and repetition as important to learning.

Child↗
PubMed1998

Visual impairment in children: prevalence, aetiology and care, 1976-85.

Visual impairment (corrected visual acuity in the best eye < 0.3) was evaluated in a retrospective study of 296 children born between 1976 and 1985 and recruited from three French departments. For children younger than 9 years, the overall prevalence was 0.80 per 1000 and that of blindness was 0.28 per 1000. No decrease in prevalence was noted over this decade. The most common aetiologies were antenatal factors (48%), which were observed mainly in the cases of poor vision, and perinatal factors (27%), which were more common in the cases of blindness. Fifty-six per cent of the children had an additional severe handicap. The most common association was with motor impairment and mental retardation. The mean age of first medical care (3.1 years) did not change over the decade: 2.0 years for children with an associated handicap, 2.9 years for cases of isolated blindness and 5.1 years for cases of isolated poor vision. Among children with isolated visual impairment, there was a significantly higher percentage of scholastic underachievers in those presenting after the age of 5 years (39.3% vs. 14.6%).

Achievement↗