American journal of mental deficiency最新文献

Six profoundly mentally retarded subjects were taught two tasks of comparable difficulty using different prompting procedures: an antecedent procedure, where the trainer prompted the learner prior to the subject's response and gradually faded the prompt on subsequent trials, approximating an errorless learning model, and a consequent procedure, where the trainer prompted the learner after an error response and gradually faded the prompt on subsequent corrections. Results show that greater gains were made with the antecedent prompting procedure compared to the consequent prompting procedure.

Despite pressures in recent years to discourage reliance upon pharmacological interventions, psychoactive drugs continue to be utilized extensively with institutionalized mentally retarded persons. In the present study the scope and pattern of psychoactive drug use within a state-wide institutional service-delivery network were examined, with a focus upon its role in the treatment of self-injurious behavior (SIB) and other aberrant behavior patterns. Correlates to psychoactive drugs and alternative intervention approaches were examined. Lack of treatment, insufficient utilization of behavioral technology, and use of physical and chemical restraints as adjuncts to positive behavioral programs were indicated.

To help fill the relative void of information about families of severely mentally retarded school children, we described 53 such families comparatively with 54 families of EMR and 50 of TMR children. All children resided in their natural homes; families were selected for study by identical means and interviewed at their home. Selection for comparison was made from larger samples to reduce mean age differences in the samples. Differences in age and SES among groups were controlled with analysis of covariance. The impact of the retarded child on adjustment of families with severely retarded children was greater than that of the other groups, but no differences occurred in the impact of the child on marital adjustment. Families with severely retarded children had the highest mean scores on all four scores of the Home Quality Rating Scale. They scored lower than others on the Cohesion, Independence, Moral-Religious Emphasis, and Organization subscales of the Family Environment Scale. Implications for assisting these families were discussed.

Tongue-reduction surgery was completed on 18 children with Down syndrome. Changes in articulation were evaluated pre- and postoperatively and at a 6-month follow-up. No significant differences in the number of articulation errors were found. The postoperative and 6-month follow-up scores of the surgery group were compared to a nonsurgery (contrast) group (N = 9) who had received two evaluations 6 months apart. Again, no significant differences were found. A follow-up survey of parental ratings on articulation of the surgery and nonsurgery group revealed that there were no significant differences between the groups but that parents of all the children claimed that "speech" had improved over the 6-month time period. These findings suggest that tongue-reduction surgery has no effect on the articulation of sounds.

Auditory and visual memory span for letters and component memory processes of TMR young adults with Down syndrome or other etiologies was examined. Component processes of the span task included long-term memory access for labels for the stimuli and memory for the order in which the stimuli were presented. Results indicated that although all subjects had relatively poor auditory memory spans, the Down syndrome group was especially poor at long-term memory access for stimulus identification and at short-term storage and processing of auditory information. Lexical storage and retrieval deficiencies were isolated, accounting for the verbal difficulties experienced by the individuals with Down syndrome, leading to their deficiency in processing lexical information.

Eighty-two clients who were transferred from a residential institution to foster-care homes were provided nutrition services as part of their Individual Program Plans. Findings of the nutrition assessment and intervention were analyzed to document the impact of deinstitutionalization and nutrition services. Nutrition-related problems identified were closely associated to the medical problems. More than half of the clients were diagnosed as having seizures and cerebral palsy and were, therefore, at high nutritional risk because of feeding problems and anticonvulsant-induced malnutrition. Forty-three of the 47 clients who were reassessed showed positive changes in height, weight, triceps skinfold thickness, dietary adequacy, and/or biochemical indices.

Three variables (diagnosis, location of cues, and MA of learners) influencing stimulus control and stimulus overselectivity in autistic children were assessed. Eight autistic and 8 intellectually average children, matched on MA, were trained on two discrimination tasks; one task contained two "within-stimulus" (i.e., physically connected) cues; the other contained the same two cues presented "extra-stimulus" (i.e., physically separate). Generalization gradients were used following training to measure the degree of stimulus control acquired by each cue. Results showed: autistic subjects tended to respond overselectively only in the extra-stimulus condition; MA was positively correlated with breadth of learning; and when autistic children were overselective to one cue, some stimulus control was also acquired by the second cue. The notion of tunnel vision was discussed, as it may represent a "keystone" deficit interfering with stimulus control and learning by autistic children.

The Adaptive Behavior Scale (ABS) was used to evaluate a three-level token economy designed to modify some aspects of the behavior of behaviorally disturbed young adults of borderline intelligence. The ABS was administered to all those referred to the program. Those admitted were retested upon discharge and 6 months later. Those not admitted, or rejected, were retested 12 months later. Results showed that initially there were few significant differences in scores between the accepted and rejected groups. Following treatment, however, large improvements occurred in those areas that were logically related to target behaviors within the token economy. These gains were maintained on follow-up. The rejected group showed no improvements over the same period.

The effects of problem size on judgments of commutativity by 51 moderately and mildly mentally retarded students were investigated. The task required subjects to judge whether commuted addition problems (e.g., 5 + 2 and 2 + 5) and noncommuted problems (e.g., 5 + 3 and 5 + 0) would have the same or different sum. Small problems had addends of five or less; large problems had at least one addend greater than five. The subjects' responses to the commutativity task were highly consistent across the two problem sizes. Results indicated that many retarded students who are given computational practice recognize the general principle that addend order does not affect the sum.

Effects of interpolating additional reinforcement into an existing "natural" schedule of reinforcement were examined on subsequent responding when experimenter-controlled reinforcement was withdrawn. Six mildly to moderately mentally retarded children were given from 10 to 45 minutes of interpolated reinforcement for target behavior that interfered with habilitation. When the interpolated reinforcement was discontinued, the forms of responding returned to those of initial baseline, and the rates were lower. The significantly lower rate of responding in the return-to-baseline condition suggests that such a procedure may be effectively incorporated into behavior-reduction programs.