Determining the language skill deficits of learning-disabled students may be difficult. They have many appropriate language skills, but may miss the subtlety of language. This is exemplified by their lack of awareness of morphemes and the important information that less-stressed morphemes provide. Developing or selecting a program to improve their…

Using self-instructional strategy training procedures, three sixth-grade learning disabled students were taught a series of self-directed prompts designed to facilitate the generation, framing, and planning of written compositions. The eight-step instructional procedure included pretraining, review of baseline performance level, description of the…

Teachers working with a language experience approach to reading may use word-sorting activities as a means of exploring the letter/sound concepts and semantic concepts that children are forming. Using words that are already in a child's reading vocabulary, words that the child has made into sight vocabulary, and words that the child has requested…

An interactionist-discovery theory of child phonology is proposed based on the following tenets: children invent their own phonological rules, and phonetic mastery is not automatically or generally in step with learning about phonemic contrasts. When a child learns the sound pattern of a language, there is constant interaction between the…

The meaning of a word often cannot be formulated by conscious rules, because it is unconscious. Evidence on the verb "break" demonstrates this. The consequence for teaching is that teachers cannot supply meanings in words, but should present a wide range of uses of a word, so that students can intuit the unconscious generalization. (Author)

The "Flash Lab" method of teaching the elementary fundamentals of drawing, a system based on the psychology of perception, the behavioral sciences, and the biological sciences, was developed to help correct common errors which beginning students make, such as inability to generalize, lack of proportional relationships, misjudgement due to depth,…

The areas of learning theory and classroom applications of that theory are brought together in this booklet. Although it is impossible to provide the answer to every classroom behavior problem, relating the problems and objectives of a given classroom to learning theory should facilitate the development of effective and efficient programs.…

One of the primary teaching tasks of an elementary school social studies teacher is that of helping pupils interpret the numerous sources of data found in a social studies program. The purpose of this self-instructional teacher education module is to develop proficiency in utilizing data interpretation process. A sequence of activities is designed…

The effects of observing a model and of providing a response rule on the learning, transfer, and retention of a dial-reading, numerical concept were studied in 144 third-graders. Different experimenters conducted the immediate learning procedures versus the measurements of retention. No extrinsic reinforcers were promised or dispensed. The…

Projects that soon a complete mechanistic understanding of simple forms of learning will be available. Describes some of the recent advances in neuroscience and psychology in understanding the changes in neural circuits that occur during certain behavioral situations. Suggests that learning involves the activation of second messenger systems. (TW)

This booklet was developed to help in the design and implementation of self-management systems for elementary-classroom students with developmental disabilities. Self-management components addressed in the booklet are self-monitoring, self-evaluation, and self-reinforcement. Chapters provide: (1) the definitions and rationale for teaching…

A study of 4 youths (ages 11-18) with autism examined the effectiveness of teaching appropriate affective behavioral responses. Participants were described by teachers as having flat and inappropriate affect. Treatment consisted of modeling, prompting, and reinforcement. The combination of an error-correction procedure and contingent delivery of…

This paper reviews 27 studies that taught community skills to persons with moderate to severe mental handicaps and tested the generalization of these skills. The review, which analyzed the degree of generalization that occurred and the effect of different strategies used, concludes that the general case method is the most effective strategy.…

Results of four experiments show that developmental differences in elaborative conceptual processing at acquisition and retrieval contribute independently to developmental increases in recall. Item identification processes for both words and pictures constrain children's elaborative processing. The constraints are time limited. (RH)