Teaching reading and writing skills to a teenaged spastic cerebral palsied person: a long-term case study

After a 2-mo. combined reading and writing training period followed by a 1 1/2-yr. lapse, an initially 16-yr.-old paraplegic cerebral palsied boy received 1 yr. of reading training followed by 2 3/4 yr. of writing training. Reading speed increased from 5 pages/hr. to about 40 pages/hr. Tolerance for protracted reading increased from a maximum of 15 min. to well over 2 hr. Writing progressed from the printing of letters more than 1/2 in. high with a fist grasp of the pen, to cursive writing of letters 1/8 to 1/4 in. high. Writing speed increased to about one-third of the normal rate. Training modes ranged from biofeedback methods employing EMG, electrooculogram, inertia detector, strain gage, contact detector, and amplified-image closed-circuit TV to discussions of attitudes, task orientation, and time scheduling. Intermediate were methods employing intrinsic feedback mechansims. Results demonstrate the effectiveness of this approach, as well as trainability of this spastic boy well beyond childhood. The methods devised provide a base for further application and investigation.