The effect of color upon the motor coordination of cerebral palsied children during a performance task

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1965

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Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of color upon the motor coordination of spastic and athetoid Cerebral Palsied children. From careful examination of the literature, the writer found a dirth of material on the subject. The test instrument for the study consisted of sixteen wooden inset puzzles of four degrees of difficulty and in the four primary colors of red, yellow, green and blue. The test was administered under the controlled conditions of as little visual stimuli as possible. The subject was presented with the puzzles, one at a time, and on a signal from the examiner began to work the puzzle. He was timed in seconds by a stop watch. Each subject worked four puzzles of four degrees of difficulty and of four different colors once a week for four consecutive weeks. Thus, at the end of four weeks he had worked all sixteen puzzles. The subjects tested consisted of nine athetoid children and sixteen spastic children between the ages of six and twelve from Moody State School in Galveston, Texas and from the Cerebral Palsy Center in Houston, Texas. The control group consisted of twenty-nine normal children from Pearce School in Houston. Due to the deficient number of subjects tested, only mean scores and total number comparisons were made. On this basis it was found, however, that under the conditions of this study there is a strong tendency for color to affect the motor behavior of the Cerebral Palsied children, to a greater degree of the spastic than the athetoid children, with red and yellow being the more detrimental of the colors.

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