S+ versus S- fading in teaching visual discriminations to severely mentally handicapped children.
Twenty-seven severely mentally handicapped children in three matched groups were trained on both a complex and a simple visual discrimination task with: (1) prompt fading on S+; (2) prompt fading on S-; or (3) no prompting (trial-and-error training). On the complex discrimination task, differences between groups were obscured by a floor effect. Only one subject from each group acquired the discrimination. However, on the simple discrimination task all nine S+ fading, eight S- fading and six trial-and-error training subjects attained criterion. Both S+ and S- fading groups made significantly fewer errors than the trial-and-error group but did not differ significantly from each other. Sixteen children who failed to acquire the complex discrimination in Experiment 1 also participated in Experiment 2. Subjects received additional training on the task by one of four procedures. Neither continued trial-and-error training, continued S+ or S- fading, reversals of the prompt between S+ and S-, or intensity fading resulted in acquisition of the task. Results are discussed in terms of overshadowing and task difficulty.
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Department of Psychology, Plymouth Polytechnic, England.
D000293:Adolescent; D001288:Attention; D002648:Child; D003118:Color Perception; D003463:Cues; D004193:Discrimination Learning; D004495:Education of Persons with Intellectual Disabilities; D005260:Female; D005556:Form Perception; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009949:Orientation; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D012858:Size Perception