The purpose of this investigation was to determine if children with moderate mental retardation could learn to use self instructional strategy with multiple exemplars to produce a generalized response and to increase self-instructional levels. Specif...
The purpose of this investigation was to determine if children with moderate mental retardation could learn to use self instructional strategy with multiple exemplars to produce a generalized response and to increase self-instructional levels. Specifically, four students with I.Q range from 46 to 60, attending special school, were taught to use the self-instruction strategy with multiple exemplars to solve four task related problems, and then required to solve untrained four task related problems to determine if they could produce generalized responses.
Each session consisted of 30minutes, which was implemented in a special school part of the classes. The terms of sessions were variated to each subject range from 7 to 24, with finishing for each subject to success three times continuously. Experimental design employed multiple baseline design across subjects.
Conclusions from results and discussions of this investigation are as follows.
First. self-instruction strategy with multiple exemplars had a positive effect on improving self-instructional levels of children with mental retardation. While there were differences in the extent of sessions subjects needed to achieve a suggested criterion, all of them had improved self-instructional response levels related to the four trained tasks and the four untrained tasks.
Second, self-instruction strategy with multiple exemplars had positive effects on improving task related problem solving abilities. While there were differences in the extent of sessions subjects needed to achieve a suggested criterion, all of them, during and after intervention sessions, had improved task-performance responses to the four trained tasks than them during baseline sessions.
Third, self-instruction strategy with multiple exemplars had positive effects on improving untrained task related problem solving abilities. While there are differences in the extent of sessions subjects need to achieve a suggested criterion, all of them, during and after intervention sessions, have more improved task-performance responses to the four untrained tasks than those during the baseline sessions.
Suggestions implied from this investigation are as follows.
First, further studies are needed to separate the factors(ex., multiple exemplars or self instruction) which may have effects on generalized problem solving abilities of children with mental retardation.
Second, further studies are needed to investigate generalized problem solving abilities of children with mental retardation across settings.
Third, further studies are needed to clarify the relationship between self-instruction and verbal abilities.
Fourth, it is suggested that teachers in special schools can use self instruction with multiple exemplars as an effective instruction strategy.
Fifth, it is suggested that teachers in special school try to use cognitive strategies with children with mental retardation.