Visually discriminated behavior in a "blind" adolescent retardate.
A teen labeled blind learned to see and use visual cues once looking earned food.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team worked with one teenage boy. Doctors said he was blind.
They used bright lights, colors, and food rewards. The boy had to look, point, or meet the teacher's eyes.
Sessions happened at a table and in the school lunch line. The goal was to show the boy could use sight if it paid off.
What they found
The teen learned to pick the red card from white ones. He also looked at the teacher's face on cue.
In the cafeteria he used visual cues to pick the right tray and pay. Staff stopped calling him blind.
How this fits with other research
Foxx (1977) kept the edible reward but added a quick over-correction when the child looked away. Eye contact jumped from about half the time to ninety percent. The extra step built on the 1969 food-only method.
C et al. (1991992) moved from colored cards to photos of faces. Adults with ID learned to read emotions after the same kind of trial-by-trial teaching. The 1969 package still worked, just with new pictures.
Farmer-Dougan et al. (1999) later showed that some learners only look at one part of a picture. Prompting them to point to every part fixed this problem. Their method echoed the 1969 prompt-and-fade style, but added a safeguard for over-selectivity.
Why it matters
If a client seems unresponsive to visual cues, test first with strong edible or tangible rewards. Small, bright stimuli and clear prompts can reveal usable vision. Fade help slowly and track data. The payoff can be bigger than labels suggest.
Want CEUs on This Topic?
The ABA Clubhouse has 60+ free CEUs — live every Wednesday. Ethics, supervision & clinical topics.
Join Free →Place a bright card and a neutral card on the table, deliver a bite of favorite food each time the client touches the bright one, and record correct looks for ten trials.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
A 16-yr-old retarded male, diagnosed organically blind and treated by those around him as a blind person, was given practice in discriminating visual stimuli. After training, he responded with significantly better than chance accuracy in a choice situation in which stimuli were as small as 18 pt Futura Medium type. In addition, he was trained to look at the experimenter's eyes when instructed to do so. Control procedures revealed that it was the reinforcement contingency that functioned to establish and maintain eye contact. Eye contact with the experimenter generalized in a limited way to situations in which this behavior was not reinforced, though not to a neutral individual. When the boy was required to use visual cues to help himself in a cafeteria line, he soon emitted the necessary behaviors, where formerly he had been assisted by others. Resumption of assistance markedly decreased self-help, suggesting that continued use of any newly learned skills would depend on the response of the individuals in his environment. The boy also learned eating behavior that appeared to require the use of visual cues.
Journal of applied behavior analysis, 1969 · doi:10.1901/jaba.1969.2-65