An assessment of identity matching to sample with 2-dimensional forms was conducted with 44 subjects with moderate and severe intellectual disabilities. Overall, generalized identity matching was demonstrated in 34 of 44 subjects, including 7 of 16 individuals with mental age scores below 3.0 years. (Author/DB)

The study compared the effectiveness and efficiency of concurrent and isolation-intermix instruction in teaching four preschool children to read common words in their environment. Concurrent instruction resulted in students learning conditional discriminations in fewer trials and minutes of instructional time suggesting the value of teaching…

A correction procedure, including interruption, physical guidance, verbal instruction, and repetition, was used to train five students with severe/profound mental retardation to reject unmatching referents to their gesture mands. Trainers are urged to assess student response when items not matching the referent of a prior request are offered.…

Two experiments with a total of 17 adolescents or adults with severe mental retardation evaluated the potential of exclusion procedures (selection of an undefined object in comparison with a defined object) as a means of training basic naming skills. Reliable exclusion and naming performance were demonstrated in nearly all subjects. (DB)

Sixteen individuals (ages 7-18) with moderate or severe mental retardation were taught to identify 2 comparative discriminations by a static or dynamic presentation procedure. No differences in percentage of unprompted correct responses were found between the two procedures in training, generalization, or maintenance. (Author/JDD)

Two students with moderate to severe mental retardation learned delayed matching to sample in which some of the trials involved complex sample stimuli, each consisting of a picture and a printed word. Matching to either the preceding picture or printed word sample was reinforced. Evidence for the formation of equivalence classes was observed.…

This study examined the matching and sequencing of quantities, numerals, and arbitrary forms by two individuals with mental retardation. Results showed that sequence training did not readily lead to new matching performances, unlike prior research with college students. Instead, training in matching to sample yielded emergent sequence production…

This study found that teachers' ratings of their 8 severely mentally handicapped pupils' (ages 9-18) classroom behavior were correlated with children's performance on a discrimination learning task. The factors of attention/distractibility and responsivity to consequences correlated significantly with number of errors and number of trials to…