Acceleration of Object Permanence with Severely and Profoundly Retarded Children

Abstract

This study was an attempt to train severely and profoundly retarded children to improve their level of functioning on a measure of object permanence. The subjects were eight children living in a residential facility for severely and profoundly retarded children. The subjects were matched for age, etiology, and level of cognitive functioning and then randomly assigned to either the experimental group or the control group. The findings indicated large improvements on the object permanence measure for all four experimental subjects, with smaller improvements by all four of these subjects in other areas of sensorimotor intelligence. Long-term retention of these improvements was also evidenced. Only one control subject demonstrated any improvement, and it was considered negligible. The results are discussed, and possible practical implications are suggested.