Teaching Conversation in Small Groups of Children and Adults With Moderate and Severe Mental Retardation

Abstract

Eight children of ages from 9 to 16 years and eight adults from 22 to 36 years with moderate to severe mental retardation and other disabilities were selected because they had some speech, but never engaged in conversational exchanges with their peers. They were evaluated for their mental capacity and assigned to six groups according to their ability. The intervention combined a table game about animals (puzzle pairs), individual and small-group teaching of questions on animals, their food and habitat, modeling, error correction, social praise and tangible reinforcers. A within subject withdrawal design was used to show the acquisition of the ability to converse through conditions of baseline, teaching, probes and generalization measures. All participants learned to engage in structured conversations. This skill generalized and was maintained after 3 and 7 months. Two social validity measures affirmed these improvements in the ability to converse.