Effects of a blacklight visual field on eye-contact training of spastic cerebral palsied children

This study investigated the effects of a blacklight visual field on eye-contact training with visually impaired, spastic cerebral palsied children. Four subjects, aged 6 and 7 yr., identified as visually impaired in reference to the Callier-Azusa Scale, were given training in making eye contact with a stimulus object under both white and a blacklight visual field. A counter-balanced design was used so that two of the subjects began training under white light and two began with a blacklight visual field. An analysis of variance for repeated measures indicated a significant main effect for the lighting condition. All subjects performed better under the blacklight condition, even overcoming the expected practice effect when white light training followed blacklight training.