The Use of Color Cues to Facilitate Discrimination Learning in Moderately Retarded Adults: A Pilot Study

Abstract

This study explored the effectiveness of color cues in facilitating discrimination tasks with retarded adults The ability to discriminate among utensils is an important and necessary skill in food preparation. Moderately retarded adults may be capable of food preparation, but because of deficits in discrimination learning they frequently encounter difficulty in following recipes It was surmised that the use of color, as a method for facilitating discrimination learning might have potential value as an instructional aid in this area of independent living skill Ten women from a daycare center served as subjects in testing the hypothesis that colored drawings would be more effective than monochromatic (black-and-white) drawings in teaching the identification of 10 common kitchen utensils Subjects presented with colored stimulus cards were able to select the correct utensil more accurately and more quickly than subjects using black-and-white cards (p<.001). The results may have implications for other learning situations where mastery of independent living skills requires the ability to discriminate.