Training vision screening behavior to children with developmental disabilities

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends vision screening of all children between 3 and 5 years of age, and states have mandated vision screening for all school children. Participants were three 4–6-year old school children with either a developmental delay or autism who scored “could not test” on the state required vision screening. Participants’ screening performance indicated both a visual discrimination skill deficit and escape/avoidance behavior. Discrimination training procedures included preference assessment, match-to-sample discrimination discrete trials training, transfer of stimulus control procedures, differential reinforcement, and choice making. Escape/avoidance was treated by fading-in the aversive sensory stimulus (i.e., duration of wearing glasses), escape extinction, and reinforcement of alternative behavior. Following training, two children passed their vision screening and compliance generalized to their hearing screening. The third child met the performance criterion for the two vision screening behaviors trained.