Operant conditioning techniques were used to modify verbal behavior in 18 institutionalized, trainable mentally handicapped mongoloids with chronological ages from 4-6 to 7-10 and mental ages from 2.0 to 2.10. Two instruments were constructed to evaluate language: a language test and a speech rating scale. Project leaders had no prior knowledge of…

Operant conditioning principles were used to promote verbalizations based on current event television news stories in three institutionalized 15-year-old retardates. Percentages of correct responses concerning the videotaped news segments were recorded in four experimental conditions: baseline, massed news with tokens and praise contingent on…

Papers on visually handicapped and mentally retarded children presented are the following: the challenge of the problem; programming; developmental learning; psychotherapeutic learning; operant conditioning; design of institutional facilities; care and management in institutional settings, schools, and state homes; and definitions of medical terms…