title: Effects of within-stimulus and extra-stimulus prompting of letter discrimination by mentally retarded persons.
abstract: Two different prompting procedures for teaching letter discrimination to mentally retarded persons were compared. Each of 24 severely retarded subjects received training on six alphabet letters, three by extra-stimulus prompting (adding to topographically different cue, a pointing finger) and three by within-stimulus prompting (accentuating critical features of the stimuli themselves). Letter discrimination was tested prior to, immediately following, and 2 weeks after training. A significantly greater proportion of letters trained by within-stimulus prompting was learned (p less than .001), thereby replicating past research with autistic children. Since mentally retarded persons are overselective and attend to few cues in a stimulus array, within-stimulus prompting may be more effective than between-stimulus prompting.
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D003463:Cues; D004193:Discrimination Learning; D004495:Education of Persons with Intellectual Disabilities; D005069:Evaluation Studies as Topic; D005260:Female; D005556:Form Perception; D005795:Generalization, Stimulus; D006801:Humans; D007360:Intelligence; D008297:Male; D012153:Retention, Psychology; D013663:Teaching / Q000379:methods*; D013997:Time Factors; D014796:Visual Perception