Abstract
The purpose of this study was to determine if any differences exist in eye contact before and after vestibulaar stimulation in mentally retarded children. The subjects of this study were 20 mentally retarded children with a mean age of 9 years and 8 months and a mean intelligence quotient of $30.4{\pm}9.1$. Vestibular stimulation was given for 15 minutes, 5 times a week, for 4 weeks from September 1 to September 30, 1989. Equipment used included a rocking-horse, see-saw and scooter board. Two testers used a digital watch calibrated to 1/100 second to measure object-eye contact duration and the Blocks and Shapes test for determining frequency of object-eye contact in the subjects. The results of this study were as follows : 1. There was a significant prolongation in the duration of eye contact after 15 minutes of vestibular stimulation (p<0.005). 2. There was no significant difference in duration of eye-object contact between the first and last vestibular stimulation. 3. There was no significant difference in the length of time of attention paid to objects (frequency of eye-object contact) before and after 15 minutes of vestibular stimulation on the first vestibular stimulation. 4. There was no significant difference in the frequency of eye-object contact between the first and first vestibular stimulation. In conclusion, there was u significant improvement in duration of eye-object contact on intrasession measurement in mentally retarded children. However, there was no significant improvement over time after 4 weeks of vestibular stimulation on intersession measurement. Nor was there any statistically significant improvement in frequency of eye-object contact over time during the study period.