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S + versus S ‐ fading in teaching visual discriminations to severely mentally handicapped children
Author(s) -
STRAND S. C.
Publication year - 1989
Publication title -
journal of intellectual disability research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.941
H-Index - 104
eISSN - 1365-2788
pISSN - 0964-2633
DOI - 10.1111/j.1365-2788.1989.tb01478.x
Subject(s) - fading , task (project management) , psychology , audiology , developmental psychology , statistics , mathematics , medicine , decoding methods , management , economics
. 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.