Developmental auditory agnosia in the severely retarded: A further investigation

The hypotheses were investigated that (a) ability to recognize the auditory perceptual stimuli for familiar events is a developmental correlate to language acquisition and (b) the low functioning mentally handicapped suffer from auditory agnosia and are impaired in this ability. The subjects were 42 nonretarded children of ages 3 through 6 and 53 severely and moderately retarded, noninstitutionalized students. The retarded subjects were matched by mental age to the chronological age of the nonretarded children. The stimuli were 49 environmental sounds; the task consisted of sound-and-picture matching-to-sample. Group membership and developmental age were the factors in an analysis of variance design. The results revealed a strong effect of developmental age (p <. 0001). The effect of group was not significant, indicating that auditory agnosia may not be common among the lower functioning retarded. The assumption that agnosia may be a major factor underlying the language disability of the severely retarded was reexamined. It was suggested that the severely retarded achieve the requisite perceptual-semantic knowledge base for language too late, after the critical age for spontaneous and efficient language learning has passed.     

Effects of reinforcement and guidance procedures on instruction-following behavior of severely retarded children

Positive reinforcement, physical guidance, and fading procedures were used to teach two severely retarded children motor responses to a variety of verbal instructions. Subjects' responses to one set of instructions provided the focus for the training procedures. Their responses to a second set of instructions were used to assess the generalized effects of training. The frequency of responses to both sets of instructions was evaluated during Baseline 1, Training 1, Baseline 2, and Training 2 periods. During the training periods, this evaluation was made after the daily training sessions when no training procedures were in effect. Results indicated that the subjects showed pronounced increases in instruction-following behaviors (both trained and untrained) during training periods with decreases in such behavior occurring during the Baseline 2 period. The general findings demonstrate the applicability of the training procedures for producing and maintaining instruction-following behaviors in severely retarded children and for facilitating appropriate responding to instructions not directly involved in training.     

Development of social responses in two severely retarded children

The effect of reinforcement dependent on the social responses of two severely retarded withdrawn children was investigated. During 30 training sessions (30 min each) food and praise were administered dependent upon the children's mutual participation in a ball-rolling and block-passing task. Both children showed a progressive increase in social interaction in a non-training situation during this reinforcement period. After the reinforcement procedures were removed, social behavior decreased markedly. Response generalization to children not involved in training occurred.     

Use of contingent lemon juice to eliminate public masturbation by a severely retarded boy

Contingent lemon juice successfully reduced and maintained at zero levels, public masturbatory responses in a severely retarded boy with a four year history of this behavior. Previously, more common procedures (loud “no” plus hand spanking. ignoring) had proven to be ineffective. The lemon juice contingency was shown to be effective in a period of from 13 to 16 days (in both home and school settings) and was easily implemented by a parent, a teacher and a para-professional.     

Inappropriate speech in a severely retarded child: a case study in language conditioning and generalization

The modification of inappropriate speech, a class of behaviors rather than a limited number of specific examples, is little known in the severely retarded. In this study, operant techniques were used to modify the strikingly bizarre and inappropriate speech of a severely retarded boy. The boy's appropriate verbal responses to questions about magazine pictures were reinforced with candy. When he responded inappropriately, the magazine was withdrawn, and social interaction was discontinued for a 10-sec timeout period. Negative responses were ignored, the next picture displayed, and the next question asked immediately. In 10 sessions, appropriate responses increased from 26% to 86% of all responses. A reversal of reinforcement was then introduced, in which inappropriate responses were reinforced, appropriate responses resulted in timeout, and negative responses were treated as before. This reduced the percentage of appropriate responses to 24%. Subsequent sessions of reinforcement for appropriate responses increased appropriate responses to 96% of all responses. At significant stages in the experiment, a measure of possible generalization was attempted. Although some generalization was recorded, it was minimal: some explanations are discussed.     

Reaction time,evoked brain potentials,and psychometric g in the severely retarded

Measurements derived from reaction time (RT), movement time (MT), and an index of neural adaptability (NA) derived from averaged evoked potentials are significantly related to each other as well as to g factor scores extracted from a battery of 15 psychometric tests in a sample of 54 severely retarded adults. The RT-MT and NA variables show a shrunken multiple R of .64 (p < .001) with psychometric g.     

Treatment rights of the mentally retarded: The cost of refusal

The cost of the mentally retarded client's rights to refuse treatment, in both monetary and human terms, varies under different legal/clinical circumstances. The process of placing severely retarded clients into the community with poor or no supervision, especially those who refuse or are denied treatment, can result in devastating costs for the client and others. The complexities associated with mental retardation require sophisticated treatment considerations. Moreover, these clients often need guidance in making meaningful decisions relevant to their quality of life. In order for this process to produce desirable results, for both the mentally retarded client and society, in general, a balance must be struck between the legal and clinical factors involved.     

Reduction of dangerously aggressive behavior in a severely retarded resident through a combination of positive reinforcement procedures

A severely retarded resident was released from a timeout chair only occasionally for brief periods of time. Under the timeout contingency alone, the subject made a choke response within minutes of being released. Attention, such as hugs, smiles, and candy was then increased, first by providing it non-contingently and continuously as long as there were no aggressive responses and then, by making it contingent upon incompatible responses. Under conditions of timeout plus increased attention, choking decreased aburptly. Grabbing responses, which increased when choking was reduced, were also reduced under conditions of timeout plus attention. Unrestrained time was gradually increased and all extra attention, i.e., more scheduled attention than provided other residents, was gradually withdrawn. When the resident was unrestrained all day and all extra attention was withdrawn, grabs and, to a lesser extent, chokes increased. Both were again reduced to a manageable level by scheduling several brief periods of attention each day. Hence, the program resulted in quick reductions that endured when the program was largely withdrawn. The changes in aggressive responding as a function of the presence and absence of extra attention suggest the importance of extra "positive reinforcement" in programs based upon positive reinforcement procedures and dealing with retarded residents for whom positive reinforcers may be scarce.     

Visual novelty preference as a measure of recognition memory in moderately, severely, and profoundly retarded persons

A novelty preference method was used to examine memory processes in profoundly, severely, and moderately retarded persons. After viewing a photograph of a face for 30 seconds, subjects were shown the study face and a new one after intervals ranging up to 3 minutes. Data were obtained from 30 of 56 subjects with this method. Of the 30 subjects, 20 showed significant preference for looking at the new face in the test. Recognition memory as indexed by novel looking declined over the retention interval. Memory was stronger but decayed more rapidly for higher memorable (distinctive) faces. With refinement, the novelty preference method holds promise for the study of cognitive processes in nonverbal persons. But, since memory is being inferred from response preferences which reflect an induced motivational state, satiation, the relationship between this state and memory must be established.     

Training two severely retarded adolescents to ask questions

Two retarded boys were taught to discriminate items they knew how to label (training items) from items they did not know (probe items), to respond appropriately by naming any training items, and to ask a question about any probe items. The boys did not learn to question when appropriate questioning was modelled by the experimenter; however, when they were prompted and rewarded for asking questions about some training items, they then began asking questions about probe items. Both the modelling-and prompting-reinforcement procedures were introduced in an across-subject, multiple baseline design.     

Establishing generalized verb-noun instruction-following skills in retarded children

A transfer of stimulus control procedure was used to establish generalized verb-noun instruction-following skills in two severely retarded boys. Each of 12 verbs was trained, in a multiple baseline order, to criterion with each of 12 nouns in the form of verb-noun verbal instructions. Throughout training, reinforced probes were conducted on both trained and untrained verb-noun combinations. As training progressed, both subjects began to respond correctly to untrained verb-noun instructions. Eventually, a verb needed to be trained in combination with only one noun before generalization occurred to the as-yet-untrained 11 verb-noun instructions involving that verb.     

Behavioral expectations of retarded and nonretarded children

Two experiments were conducted to examine the effect of the mental retardation (MR) label on impression formation among retarded and nonretarded children and adolescents. The first experiment, conducted with nonretarded children in a mainstreamed school, indicated that they have pessimistic expectations of retarded children with regard to cognitive and ability-related behaviorsand, to a lesser extent, social behaviors (i.e., getting married). However, their reactions were not as pessimistic nor as “patronizing” as were those demonstrated by college students in previous research. In the second experiment, mentally retarded adolescents indicated that they also have negative behavioral expectations of retarded children, however, their self expectations were negative only for social behaviors. The results suggest that, among retarded persons, the expectations associated with the MR label are negative for social behavior, but apparently less pessimistic for cognitive and ability related tasks.     

Enhancing the creative problem-solving skills of educable mentally retarded students

60 educable mentally retarded students from 3 schools in a large urban school system received 9 wk. of instruction from an adaptation of the Productive Thinking Program. Their performance on measures of creative thinking was compared with that of 60 students who received no additional instruction. The conclusions drawn were that (1) special attention to creative thinking training for educable mentally retarded students may be quite effective and results stable over time and (2) the measures of fluency, flexibility, and originality are the most useful in assessing creative thinking for this group.     

The effects of a graduated stimulus change on the acquisition of a simple discrimination in severely retarded boys

Methods were compared for teaching severely retarded boys to discriminate the position of a 0.75-in. black square and to press the response key closest to it. Seven boys were given trial-and-error training; one learned the task. The six boys who did not learn were presented with a program of graduated stimulus changes. All but one acquired the performance, and he was under appropriate control during the program. When he reached the criterion stimuli, he reverted to a position-based response learned during trial-and-error training. Six similar subjects were presented with graduated stimulus training alone. All six learned the criterion discrimination with few or no errors. Both groups were tested for retention of the criterion performance 35 days after training was completed. Two boys who had near-perfect criterion discrimination performances showed no signs of retention after 35 days. These boys had a history of trial-and-error training.     

Information producing responses in normal and retarded children.

Normal and retarded children were given trials on several discriminations which varied in difficulty. On standard discrimination trials the retarded subjects did not differ from the MA control subjects in the number of errors made but both groups made more errors than the CA control group. On other trials if subjects were not sure which stimulus was correct they were allowed to press an information key which made the discrimination easier. The retarded subjects made significantly more informational key responses than either of the control groups. These results confirmed the findings of prior investigations dealing with outerdirectedness in an experimental situation which did not allow distractibility to be a significant factor.     

Selected parameters of response organization in mildly mentally retarded children

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of response organization on reaction time (RT) and movement time (MT) of mildly mentally retarded children. Two groups of 30 subjects each were formed: a retarded group 9 yr. of age and a normal group matched for chronological age. Subjects were randomly assigned to one of three precued conditions in which they were told that the forthcoming response would be performed with the right or left hand (precue hand), be to the right or left side (precue direction), or cross or not cross the body midline (precue midline). The retarded group performed significantly more slowly than the normal group on both RT and MT. Both groups, however, were able to utilize precued hand information as opposed to other precued variables, indicating that knowing which hand to use is important when organizing responses.     

Talking to children, foreigners, and retarded adults

Speech addressed to different categories of listeners was examined in a study in which undergraduate women taught a block design task to either a 6-year-old child, a retarded adult, a peer who spoke English as a second language (foreigner), or a peer who was an unimpaired native speaker of English. The speech addressed to children differed from the speech addressed to native adults along every major dimension that emerged in this study: It was clearer, simpler, and more attention maintaining, and it included longer pauses. Speech addressed to retarded adults was similar in numerous ways to the speech addressed to 6-year-olds; in some ways (e.g., repetitiveness), it was even more babyish. However, speech to the retarded adults did differ in timing from the other styles of speaking in that it included fewer and somewhat shorter pauses. Speech addressed to foreigners was more repetitive than speech addressed to native speakers, but in all other ways it was very similar. There was some evidence that speakers fine-tuned their communications to the level of cognitive and linguistic sophistication of their particular listener; for example, speakers addressing the more sophisticated foreigners (relative to those addressing the less sophisticated foreigners) used speech that included fewer devices for clarifying, simplifying, and maintaining the listeners' attention. We discuss the hypothesis that baby talk (the speech addressed to children) is a prototypical special speech register from which other special registers are derived.