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Relationship Between Reinforcement and Eye Movements During Ocular Motor Training with Learning Disabled Children

Audrey F. Punnett is a Psychological Assistant at the Fresno Community Hospital, Learning Development Center. She received her PhD degree from the California School of Professional Psychology.

Gene D. Steinhauer, PhD

Gene Steinhauer is an assistant professor of Psychology at California State University, Fresno, California. He received his PhD degree in Psychology from the University of Montana. Address: Dr. Audrey F. Punnett, Fresno Community Hospital, Leon S. Peters Rehabilitation Center, P.O. Box 1232, Fresno, CA 93715, or Dr. Gene D. Steinhauer, Department of Psychology, California State University, Fresno, CA 93740.

Existing efficacy research on vision therapy shows a pattern of inconsistent results. This is surprising since previous research has shown that eye movements can be controlled by their consequences (feedback/reinforcement). In the present study four reading disabled children were given eight sessions of ocular motor training with reinforcement and eight sessions without reinforcement. Two reading disabled control subjects were treated exactly as the experimental subjects except that they did not receive ocular motor training. Results revealed that as reinforcement increased the rate of saccades and number of regressions decreased, and fixation duration increased. The four experimental subjects showed an improvement (pretreatment to posttreatment) on the Gilmore Oral Reading Test and the Wide Range Achievement Test. Control children's scores declined on these measures. The results demonstrate that using reinforcement to train ocular motor skills can improve those skills, which in turn elevates reading performance.

Journal of Learning Disabilities, Vol. 17, No. 1, 16-19 (1984)
DOI: 10.1177/002221948401700106


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