Effects Of Opportunities To Practice On Learning Among Students With Severe Handicaps

Educators often emphasize the important role practice plays in learning among students with severe retardation. To study the relationship between differing amounts of practice and learning, four students with severe retardation were provided with either 10 or 30 opportunities per day to learn to discriminate and label parts of household appliances. The experimental conditions were applied across tasks and subjects using a multiple baseline design. Treatments were counterbalanced across subjects and tasks. An analysis of data reveals that for all students levels of accuracy were significantly higher in the 30 trials training conditions as compared with the 10 trial conditions. For three of the students, the tasks for which 30 trials of training were provided resulted in higher rates of acquisition; for the other, the acquisition rates were very similar for both conditions. Implications of these findings as related to classroom practice and further research are discussed.