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VIDBE-Q Volume 63 Issue 2
(Barraga & Erin, 2001). Only one study has directly examined the development of DT in
children with VI, meaning there is very limited knowledge about this skill in this population.
The study, conducted by Wyver and Markham (1999), found that 19 students with severe
VI performed similarly to their sighted peers on the Alternate Uses Task, but there was
greater variability amongst their scores than in the sighted sample. There are many
possible reasons why the authors may have found this variability and the present study
aimed to expand on their work by investigating which student and curriculum
characteristics might influence DT development in students with VI. We also examined
how students' DT relates to their 'real-life' problem-solving ability through the use of a
scenario-based problem-solving task, in order to determine how important DT may be for
students with VI.
Methodology
During our CEC 2018 presentation, we shared results from our study in which 52
students with VI (ages 7-18 years) participated. Each student completed two DT tasks.
One was the Alternate Uses Task, in which the examiner handed the student an object
and asked them to generate as many ideas as possible for how to use or play with that
object. The second task was researcher created to simulate more 'real-life' problem-
solving. The instructions were similar to the Alternate Uses Task, but the students were
given a scenario and asked 'what could you do?' For example, one scenario provided the
following situation: "You get home from school and realize that you are locked out of the
house. What could you do?" We conducted three trials for each of the two tasks (i.e.,
three objects and three scenarios). Scores were created for each students' total number
