Education and Training in Autism and Developmental Disabilities

In order to facilitate the staff of a public school for trainable mentally retarded students a consultant was employed for a 2 year period. Emphasis was placed on the consultant's active role in helping the staff establish new behaviors. Therefore, the consultant reached the children indirectly through the staff. The problems of the system became the focus. Crisis theory and intervention were integral parts of the task. As a desired end result, the consultant became superfluous and unnecessary.

A classroom project utilizing the Bell & Howell Language Master^® Audio-Visual Instruction System to improve oral communication skills in six preadolescent educable mentally retarded students is described. Standardized test scores and linguistic analyses of pre- and posttreatment speech samples revealed improved quantity and quality of oral language.

48 black and 48 white elementary and middle school students were administered the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC) to assess the effect of examiner race on individual intelligence test scores. Three black and 3 white female examiners were employed. Analysis of variance procedures revealed no significant effects for the examiner race nor any interactions of examiner race X's student race at either grade level.