| Summary: | The purpose of this study was to compare the effects of social reinforcement and self-instruction in modifying the conceptual tempo of mentally retarded children, to assess the relative durability of the changes in conceptual tempo produced by the two interventions, and to evaluate the effectiveness of cognitive-behavioral and behavioral procedures for promoting generalization across tasks.
Cognitive-behaviorists have claimed that self-instruction can be used to the advantage of children with a broad range of handicapping conditions, including mental retardation. However, Luria has speculated that verbally-mediated procedures such as self-instruction lose their effectiveness when they are used to change the behavior of mentally retarded children with mental ages of less than five years. In contrast, no such developmental thresholds should affect performance when social reinforcement is used to change the behavior of mentally retarded children because the procedure relies on environmental manipulation rather than verbal mediation.
To investigate developmental factors which might yield differential treatment effects as a function of age, two groups of mentally retarded school children participated in the study: 22 seven year-olds and 22 ten year-olds. The subjects completed a series of experimentally-generated match-to-sample and maze tests and training items over an eight week period, followed by a one month period during which no training or testing occurred. A one week follow-up was then conducted. Four variables (three reflecting accuracy and one reflecting speed) were derived for each of the two tests. Data were analyzed through the process of visual inspection and by two statistical procedures. The first of these was the C method time-series analysis for the match-to-sample and maze variables. In a second level of analysis, each subject's scores for the time-series analyses were treated in an ANOVA.
The results of the ANOVA showed significant main effects for age for two (33.33%) variables reflecting accuracy, indicating that the raw scores for these variables changed more for ten year-olds than for seven year-olds.
Significant main effects for treatment were found for all variables reflecting accuracy, indicating that the raw scores for these variables changed more for social reinforcement than for self-instruction. This was interpreted as indicating that social reinforcement produced greater gains in accuracy than did self-instruction. Significant main effects for treatment were found for all variables reflecting speed, indicating that the raw scores for these variables changed more for self-instruction than for the social reinforcement. This was interpreted as indicating that subjects assigned to the social reinforcement treatment responded more rapidly than did subjects assigned to the self-instruction treatment.
Significant main effects for phase were found for all variables reflecting accuracy and speed, indicating that the change in trends for these variables was greater during the treatment phase than during the baseline phase. This was interpreted as indicating that the treatments accelerated trends from the baseline to the treatment phase.
Nonsignificant age x treatment interactions (in an identical configuration) were found for five (100%) of the variables reflecting accuracy. The consistent pattern of the interaction was seen as suggesting a differential treatment effect which varied as a function of age.
Visual inspection showed that social reinforcement produced more accurate performance than self-instruction for all variables reflecting accuracy, and more rapid responding for all variables reflecting speed. Changes in performance were more durable for subjects assigned to the social reinforcement treatment than for those assigned to the self-instruction treatment.
The study concludes with a summary of the results, a discussion of their significance in the light of the hypotheses and the work of previous investigators, and implications for further research. === Education, Faculty of === Educational and Counselling Psychology, and Special Education (ECPS), Department of === Graduate
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