This study addressed the problem of promoting generalization of knowledge in people with mental handicaps, by presenting an approach based on the idea that certain cognitive representations of strategies and related concepts are common to solving a wide variety of problems. The surface context of these problems may vary considerably, but all will…

A constant time delay procedure was used to teach four adolescents with moderate mental retardation to select lower priced grocery items using an adaptive number line. Students reached criterion, maintained the skill up to 14 weeks after training, and generalized the skill from the classroom to a community grocery store. (Author/DB)

This study compared the acquisition of an initial place value skill when presented in a concrete, semiconcrete, abstract teaching sequence to acquisition of the same skill when presented at the abstract level only. The 24 subjects were elementary and middle school students (ages 8-13) with learning disabilities who were randomly assigned to…