Abstract
Purpose:
To create a tool for evaluating the cognitive potential of visual handicapped children enrolled in elemenatry school. We took a different approach and departed from the commonly used Navon paradigm:expanded the types of stimuli,avoded the large-small dichotomy, and substituted the spartial orientation taskks and reaction time as measure of performance.
Methods:
The present study was carried on 20 school children with impaired vision and cotrol group of 10 children with normal vision-all enroled in a regular elemantary school.The stimuli were 6 Hebrew letters,6 numbers and 6 objects which were exposed for 2 seconds on PC screen They had three distinct sizes :large,medium and small and were presented in separate blocks, singly and composed:each letter, number,and object of a certain size consisted of smaller units.Any kind of response , verbal or nonverbal that indicated recognition was scored.
Results:
There was a great diffrence among the normal and vision impaired groups as regarding the scores. The lower the visual acuity the lower the recognition score. The objects symbols was the group with the lower score and the composed ones with the lowest one. Children with normal sight had 100% score in numbers and letters and 98% in objects. Visually impaired children had between 98% and 78% scores according to symbol groups and visual acuity.
Conclusions:
We found a strong correlation between the degree of visual impairment and the complexity of information that can be read by the visually impaired children.
Keywords: 754 visual acuity •
501 discrimination •
584 low vision