Krenn M J, Whiteley J H
Department of Psychology, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada.
Percept Mot Skills. 1990 Jun;70(3 Pt 1):867-70. doi: 10.2466/pms.1990.70.3.867.
An habituation-dishabituation procedure was used to study perception of changes in figure orientation by nonambulatory children with profound mental retardation. On each of 3 days, 16 participants were given familiarization trials with either a vertical or an horizontal pattern, followed by test trials with the familiarized stimulus and one of three novel stimuli--a 90 degree or 45 degree rotation of the pattern, or a rearrangement of the pattern elements into a square. Visual fixation times decreased over familiarization trials. Fixation times on test trials were longer for novel than for familiar stimuli, indicating that these children discriminated changes in form and orientation.
