The effects of social punishment, positive practice, and timeout on the noncompliant behavior of four mentally retarded children were assessed in a multitreatment withdrawal design. When programmed, the experimental procedure occurred contingent on noncompliance to experimenter-issued commands. Commands were given at 55-sec intervals throughout each experimental session. The results showed (1) lower levels of noncompliance with social punishment than with the positive-practice or timeout conditions, and (2) that relatively few applications of social punishment were required to obtain this effect. The advantages of social punishment over other punishment procedures, considerations to be made before using it, and the various aspects of the procedure that contribute to its effectiveness were discussed.
Behavioral observations obtained from mother-child interactions were compared for three groups of mother-child pairs: (1) nonclinic, normal children; (2) noncompliant children; (3) children identified as learning disabled. The mothers of children with learning disabilities dispensed more rewards and asked more questions than the mothers in the other two groups. In addition, data from an attitude scale revealed that the mothers of the learning disabled children perceived their children to have more behavioral and adjustment problems than did the mothers of the nonclinic children, but to have fewer problems than the mothers of clinic children judged their children to have. The relationship of these data to the overall development of the child with a learning disability and their utility in parent training and counseling programs are discussed.
In last month's Journal, Suiter and Potter demonstrated that like normals, LD children use categories to organize material for recall. Similarly, this article shows that LD children can benefit from preorganized material and that the positive effects are not lost soon after teaching, as is often reported in clinical observations of LD children. These studies may suggest avenues of strength—avenues differing in their conceptual level as opposed to their modality — which can be used in the teaching process. — G.M.S. The effect that training paradigmatic language structures has upon the reading process is investigated with LD children. The effects of intelligence, special training, and training over time were analyzed in a pretest-posttest control group design. Findings reveal that paradigmatic thought products are both testable and teachable structures and are inherent in both oral and written communication. Children who received training made rapid and positive gains on all criterion measures, and gains were residual over time. It appears that the ability to manipulate and apply paradigmatic operations has a favorable effect upon the understanding of written language and helps LD children to process and organize information.
Research which focuses on the study of comprehension in relation to language primarily deals with the analysis of language structures (i.e., sentence structure or syntax [Athey 1971, MacGinitie 1975 ). There is relatively little research, however, on how meaning is conveyed by language used in written communication. Syntactical aspects cannot explain how an individual brings meaning to and derives meaning from written discourse, since semantic interpretations are relative not only to the logical relations among the words given in a sentence or in a group of sentences, but also the the experiential background and level of cognitive awareness of the language user (Dinnan 1975, Lesgold 1974.
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