Education and Training in Autism and Developmental Disabilities

Strategies to facilitate the development of improved public attitudes toward mentally retarded persons appear necessary, as increasing numbers of mentally retarded persons leave state institutions and enter residences in the community. Research on the effects of contact and information upon attitudes toward this group is reviewed, and implications for efforts to improve public attitude toward community integration of mentally retarded people are presented.

Assessment of relevant academic and social skills of developmentally disabled adolescents or young adults would seem to be most effective if done in the context of an applied or prevocational setting. An assessment instrument was developed to measure applied reading and comprehension skills, direction following (using information from the reading passages), applied number skills, and social adaptation to a work situation. Comparison of the scores of 30 developmentally disabled adolescents with their levels on comparable tests of achievement was used as a preliminary measure of the validity of this instrument.

During a six-week period, nonhandicapped third and fifth grade students were taught about five handicapping conditions. Attitudes of experimental subjects to handicaps were compared to controls on the Scale of Children's Attitudes Toward Exceptionality (SCATE). Although significant differences between experimental and control groups were not found, differences between third and fifth grade students were found, and both positive and negative trends were noted. One negative trend was a hierarchy of attitudes, with attitudes toward the retarded rated more negatively than were those toward other handicapped groups. Discussion of these trends and suggestions for future exploration of ways to teach children about handicaps are given.

This paper reviews the literature on the relationship of child abuse to mental retardation. An analysis of the literature suggests a higher incidence of mental retardation for abused children than might be expected in the general population. Problems concerning inconsistent and inadequate definitions of abuse and retardation within the literature are also discussed. Implications are drawn for the expanded role of educators in the prevention, identification, and treatment of abused children with intellectual deficiencies.

Several successful training techniques for teaching complex behaviors to the retarded have in- cluded chaining, whole task, prompts, and consequences. However, little has been learned in terms of how these different instructional methods interact with each other that is, how the use of guidance procedures affect the efficiency of chaining and whole task. The present study compared the efficiency between two pairs of training methods: (a) Backward Chaining Preguidance (working in a backward order and using prompts) versus Backward Chaining Postguidance (working in a backward order and using feedback only); and (b) Whole-Preguidance (working in a forward order from start to finish and using prompts) versus Whole-Postguidance (working in a forward order from start to finish and using feedback only). Twelve moderately and severely retarded adults were taught to assemble four 9-part assemblies a car- buretor, bicycle brake, dishwasher pump, and lawn mower engine. Results indicated that preguidance procedures were superior to postguidance in terms of total training time and total errors. The trend favoring preguidance was evident for both backward chaining and whole task, and for the moderately and severely retarded subjects.

Preschool-aged moderately and severely mentally retarded children were observed during free play periods in order to investigate the relationship between developmental level and level of play in young mentally retarded children. The Parten Scale of Social Participation, the Smilansky Scale of Cognitive Play, and a combined form of the two scales were used to measure the level of play; the Denver Developmental Screening Test was used to establish the developmental levels of the children. Significant correlations were found between mean play scores obtained on each play scale and the developmental level of the children. These results indicated that the collateral relationship of play to mental development found in preschool-aged nonretarded children may also be seen in young mentally retarded children.

Twelve characteristics are offered as being important for an appropriate program for severely/profoundly handicapped (SPH) individuals: age appropriate curriculum, specific objectives, functional activities, consistent cue hierarchy, regular data collection, periodic IEP revision, detailed classroom schedule, instruction outside the classroom, integrated therapy, small group instruction, interaction with non-handicapped, and family involvement. The above characteristics provide educators with criteria for judging the appropriateness of programs that presently exist for SPH students.