Remediation of letter reversals.

Abstract

This study determined the effectiveness of tangible and social reinforcement with and without positive practice on the remediation of letter reversals. Positive practice involves the repeated practicing of appropriate behavior and has been used as a pan of the cvercorrection procedure (1). A reversal design was used with the target subject, a 20yr.-old severely retarded male. The subject had a history of successful letter discriminations except for b and d which he frequently reversed. The experimental task was a 251-word story that contained exactly 25 b's and 25 d's. The student was given the story and asked to circle all of the b's. When he completed the task, he was given another copy of the story and asked to circle all of the d's. The two dependent measures were the number of b's and d's circled (out of 3 possible 50) and the percentage of circled letters identified correctly (correctly identified letters minus incorrectly identified letters divided by the total number of letters marked). Both measures were included in this study to avoid a situation in which the percentage of the b's and d's marked correctly could increase just by identifying fewer letters and being correct on those identifications. Fig. 1 shows the percentage of letters found and the percentage of letters identified during each phase of the study. The baseline rate was about 40% for both the number of b's and d's identified and the percentage of b's and d's marked correctly. There was only a small improvement in behavior in Phase B, the tangible and social reinforcement condition. The return to baseline, Phase A, showed a modest reduction back to the previous baseline levels. During Phase C (tangible reinforcement-positive practice), there was a rapid increase in the number of b's and d's identified over the five sessions. Approximately 70% of the letters were identified correctly in the last two sessions. Also, the generalization and maintenance of the treatment effects were evaluated. Follow-up probes indicated that the results were maintained over 7-mo. and 10-mo. periods. In addition, the final probe also included a different task, suggesting generalization as well. These results indicate that positive practice used with a reinforcement system rapidly increased Imer-discriminations and that these skills were maintained. These results were found with a severely retarded subject. Although no direct comparisons can be made to learning disabled or retarded readers, the results suggest that positive practice might be a viable approach to this common problem. REFERENCE 1. AZRIN, N. H., & FOXX, R. M. Toilet training the retarded. Champaign, IL: Re