The learning of the relations between discriminative stimuli, choice actions, and their outcomes can be characterized as conditional discriminative choice learning. Research shows that the technique of presenting unique outcomes for specific cued choices leads to faster and more accurate learning of such relations and has great potential to be…

Twenty-seven retarded sheltered workshop employees were trained on discrimination tasks using combinations of preference, prompt, and task agreement. Data revealed that when the learners were prompted in the dimension of the target discrimination, fewer errors were made, training time was reduced, and fewer training trials were required to reach…

Subjects used more extra-dimensional shift solutions in the presence of novel cues than in the presence of familiar cues, except at the highest training level. (MH)

Forty retarded children, a Low Mental Age (MA) Group (mean MA 3-3 years) and a High MA Group (mean MA 5-7 years) were trained on 120 different two-choice visual discrimination problems. Initial performance differences were interpreted as a differential preference for novel and familiar stimuli. (JH)

Six retarded young adults were trained to select grocery items using picture cards as cues and to reject either (1) maximally different negative examples or (2) minimally different negative examples. Training with minimally different negative examples was functionally related to improved rejection of nontrained negative items in a nontrained…

Two time-delay conditions for teaching complex visual discriminations to 14 normal preschoolers, 12 with mild mental retardation, and 11 with moderate mental retardation were compared. Results indicated that for all populations and stimuli, time delay of multiple dynamic distinctive-feature prompts produced learning, while time delay of the single…

Research supported in part by National Institute of Mental Health, Project Grant MH-14914.

Recognition scores of 12 moderately and mildly retarded children (mean ages 13 and 14 years) for positive and negative discriminative stimuli were tested after a single trial through a discrimination problem list. (Author/CL)

Presents a series of these experiments which examined cue function in trigram verbal discrimination learning by retarded subjects. The two variables of chief interest were: (1) trigram meaningfulness, and (2) reinforcement history. (Author/LLK)

Study supported by grants from the University of Connecticut Research Foundation and from the U.S. Office of Education.