Teaching tactual discrimination of braille characters to beginning braille readers

We taught three children with visual impairments to make tactual discriminations of the braille alphabet within a matching-to-sample format. That is, we presented participants with a braille character as a sample stimulus and they were to select the matching stimulus from an array of three comparisons. In order to minimize participant errors, we arranged braille characters into training sets in which the target and non-target stimuli in the comparison arrays were initially maximally different in terms of the number of dots comprising each character. As participants mastered these discriminations, we then increased the similarity between target and non-target comparisons (i.e., an approximation of stimulus fading). All three participants’ accuracy systematically increased following the introduction of this procedure.

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Psychology

Grantor

Psychology

Year dc:date.available

2011

Author dc:creator

• Toussaint, Karen A.

• braille
• errorless learning
• tactual discrimination
• visual impairments
• stimulus fading

Statement dc:rights

• unrestricted
• Release the entire work immediately for access worldwide.

Identifier

etd-07072011-094115
https://repository.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations/749

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:repository.lsu.edu:gradschool_dissertations-1748