Increasing mentally retarded adolescents' verbalizations about current events

The effects of antecedent and consequent events on the verbal behavior of three institutionalized mentally retarded adolescents were examined. Verbal statements, related to current national and international events, were recorded after exposures to television news programs. The study examined the accuracy of verbalizations as a function of: (1) exposures to television news presentations in massed (i.e., viewing the entire news program before an opportunity to describe it) versus distributed from (i.e., viewing each news item separately with each followed by an opportunity to describe it), and (2) contingent tokens and social praise for correct verbal responses (i.e., statements corresponding to news items presented). Both the temporal distribution of news presentations and the reinforcement procedures improved the accuracy of verbal statements emitted by the subjects.