Effects of Opportunities to Practice on Learning among Students with Severe Handicaps.

Educators often emphasize the important role practice plays in learning among students with severe retardation. To study the relationship between differing amounts of practice and learning, four students with severe retardation were provided with either 10 or 30 opportunities per day to learn to discriminate and label parts of household appliances. The experimental conditions were applied across tasks and subjects using a multiple baseline design. Treatments were counterbalanced across subjects and tasks. An analysis of data reveals that for all students levels of accuracy were significantly higher in the 30 trials training conditions as compared with the 10 trial conditions. For three of the students, the tasks for which 30 trials of training were provided resulted in higher rates of acquisition; for the other, the acquisition rates were very similar for both conditions. Implications of these findings as related to classroom practice and further research are discussed. The effects of the variable "time" on severely Uniform research efforts have not been handicapped students' learning is an area found in the area of intensity of instruction, which has received little research attention. which can be considered to include the fre The few studies published on this topic adquency, duration, and scheduling of anteced dress three aspects of time: total time available ents, responses and consequences. A great for instruction, the allocation of time, and the deal of research has been done on the rela intensity of time, that is, the use of the time tionship between frequency and schedules of that is available (Lehr, 1981). consequation and skill acquisition (Wehman, Fredericks, Anderson, and Baldwin (1979) 1979; Westling & Murden, 1978), while re provide the only empirical evidence that the search on the frequency, duration and sched total time available for instruction affects ule of antecedents is not as abundant. A body achievement by severely handicapped stuof research is growing related to the timing dents. They found that among three variables of cue delivery and its relationship to learning more hours of instruction accounted for diffor the severely handicapped (Halle, Marshall ferences between high and low achieving S KIeinert& Gast, 1982; Snell groups of students. & Gast, 1981; Snell, 1982) and on the effects McCormick and Goldman (1979) adof the distribution of training (massed, spaced dressed the area of the allocation of instrucand distributed) (Mulligan, Lacy, & Guess, tional time related to the severely handi1982; Helmstetter, 1980; Koegel, Dunlap, & capped but did not directly relate it to learnDyer, 1981). ing. Observations in classes for the severely Recently, considerable attention has been handicapped revealed that 65% of the time, paid to the distribution of training trials. Mul teachers are engaged in care providing; 24% ligan et al. (1982) showed that increased mean is spent in instruction; 4% in combining care levels of responding occur when students with with instruction; and 7% in record keeping. severe handicaps are provided with distrib A second study (McCormick, Cooper, & uted training opportunities as compared with Goldman, 1979) was based on the assumption massed training opportunities. However, that an increase in time spent in instruction these authors indicate that based on the ex would result in an increase in learning by stuperimental literature, it is probable that a dents. In this study, teachers were successfully combination of both massed and distributed taught to combine care with instruction, thus trial training provides the best results as re increasing instructional time available. The lated to learning and retention. Wilcox and effect of this increase on student learning was Bellamy (1982) indicate that training in the not reported, however. natural environment may not provide enough 268 / Education and Training of the Mentally Retarded-December 1985 This content downloaded from 207.46. 13.127 on Wed, 12 Oct 2016 04:15:22 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor. org/terms Methodology training opportunities for low probability bediscrimination tasks under each of two con haviors or difficult steps in an activity and recditions: ten massed opportunities to practice ommend that massed practice be used for such per day and thirty massed opportunities to situations. practice per day. No research has been reported on the ef fects of various amounts of massed trials on learning among the severely handicapped. Recommendations to do so are not backed by ~ , empirical data. Numerous textbooks stress the importance of practice for retarded learners Four subjects who participated in this study but the authors neither provide recommenwere enrolled in a public school program for dations regarding how much practice to prothe severely handicapped. Specific informa vide nor references for further information. tion about each of the students appears in Ta A minimum of 10 trials are recommended by ble 1. Students ranged in age from 12 to 21 Haring, Liberty and White (1980) but 30 or years of age. The median age was 17.7 years, more responses are also considered approThe students had been diagnosed as having priate (White & Haring, 1980). Curricular a variety of handicapping conditions, includ programs that have an empirical basis for the ing mental retardation, autism, and emotional program content generally use approximately disturbance. No current IQ scores were avail 30 massed trials per day (Guess, Sailor, & able. All students had measured mental ages Baer, 1976; Kent, 1974). Observations of ranging between 3.5 and 5.5 years. All stu classes for students with severe handicaps dents had some receptive language either made by the author reveal that 10 massed trial through sign or speech, sessions conducted one time a day is common. The purpose of this study was to determine <, . • the effect that different numbers of oppor tunities to practice have on the accuracy level Training took place in two locations within a and rate of acquisition of discrimination and school for moderately and severely retarded labeling skills by severely handicapped learnadolescents. During all training sessions, the ers. Subjects were provided with training in rooms in which the training was done were