Learning potential and rigidity in the adolescent mentally retarded.

Abstract

Performance of educable mentally retarded (EMR) adolescents after coaching on a nonverbal reasoning task varies considerably. 5s whose scores improved markedly on the reasoning task (gainers) cannot be distinguished from those who did not benefit from the coaching experience (nongainers), when traditional IQ and school-history criteria are examined. Gainer EMRs demonstrated less rigidity than nongainers on a simple repetitive task, tending to satiate more frequently. Gainers also tended to shift concepts more readily than nongainers and MA controls. CA controls were least rigid on both tasks. Gainers' performance paralleled this group. A history of social deprivation was associated with prolonged performance on the simple repetitive tasks but not on the concept-shift problem.Budoff and Friedman (1964) described a procedure in which educable mentally retarded (EMR) 5s were tutored on a nonverbal reasoning task (Kohs block designs) through use of a systematic coaching technique. Group means of the coached in comparison to noncoached Ss increased after 1 mo. of no further exposure to the task. However, not all of the Ss who were coached demonstrated an ability to profit from this experience by improving their scores markedly. Subsequent work has focused on the differential ability to profit from the coaching experience. The hypothesis has been tested that this improvement in score indicates learning potential which cannot be predicted from a verbally based IQ score (e.g., Stanford-Binet) or the past history of school failure, the two traditional criteria used to segregate EMRs. Studies have demonstrated that those who improve their scores markedly following coaching (gainers) tend to have higher performance than verbal scale IQs on Wechsler tests, attain scores in the nonretarded ranges on Raven's Progressive Matrices (most usually above the tenth percentile), and learn more

Dynamic testing.

“…Second, correlations have been obtained in samples that have differed in terms of (a) size, ranging from N = 20 (Budoff & Pagell, 1968) to JV = 627 (Budoff & Gorman, 1974); (b) nature, ranging from mainstreamed to institutionalized mentally retarded children; and (c) age, ranging from 12 to 17 years in one study (Budoff & Pagell, 1968). The question of comparability of the obtained results in terms of both the meaning of the findings and the magnitude of the effects has yet to be addressed.…”

Assessing Severely Handicapped Children

“…Schucman (1957) found a test-teach-test model more sensitive than traditional testing methodology for determining the educability of severely mentally retarded youngsters. Budoff (1973) and Feuerstein (1970) found a similar paradigm effective with higher functioning children.…”

Análisis bibliométrico de las técnicas de evaluación del potencial de aprendizaje

“…Hace algunos arios que venimos leyendo trabajos sobre las técnicas de Evaluación del Potencial de Aprendizaje que bien las presentan como una nueva alternativa a la evaluación tradicional de las habilidades cognitivas (Budoff, 1975;Haywood, 1977;Fernández-Ballesteros, 1979;Sternberg, 1981), o en relación con la evaluación conductual de este tipo de habilidades (Haywood et al, 1975;Campllonch, 1981;Campllonch y Fernández Ballesteros, 1981), o bien como un desarrollo del concepto de zona de desarrollo próximo de Vygotski (Brown y French, 1979;Forns y Boada, 1985) o un tipo de evaluación ligado a los programas de entrenamiento cognitivo (Feuerstein, 1970). En cualquier caso, no cabe duda que es un tema que ha despertado (y nos ha despertado) gran interés, y por ello merece la pena ser examinado.…”