| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立臺南大學 === 特殊教育學系碩士班 === 90 === The effects of milieu teaching on the communication abilities of children with severe mental retardation were evaluated in this study. The single-subject, multiple probe across subjects approach was adopted, with milieu teaching as the independent variable and the numbers of various communication behaviors as dependent variables. The study subjects were three children with severe mental retardation ages between 7 and 9. Behavioral data were collected during baseline, intervention, and maintenance phases. Visual analysis and time series C statistics were used to evaluate the effects of milieu teaching on the subjects in terms of spontaneous, generalization, and exceptional communication behaviors. The effects of other observational data, as well as the social validity of the interview data were also analyzed.
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The major findings of this study are:
1 . The number of spontaneous and generalization behaviors of the tested subjects increased significantly, while the number of exceptional communication behaviors decreased significantly with milieu teaching.
The numbers of various communication behaviors was maintained with milieu teaching.
Milieu teaching also showed promising signs on improving other communication behaviors. Improvements on frustration endurance, and the willingness of active communications, and the appropriateness of communication behaviors, as well as the waiting time during interaction were observed on one of the subjects. On another subject, improved language imitation, frustration endurance, and the willingness of learning relative cognition were observed. On the third subject, the benefit of milieu teaching was evident by observing the elongated latency during interaction and decreased maladaptive communication behaviors.
Parents and teachers confirmed that milieu teaching could improve the communication ability of the children with severe mental retardation. Keys to the success of communication improvement include the creation of a natural learning environment, the use of contextual and living teaching, systematic teaching strategies, and the effective uses of reinforcement systems and communication books.
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