Exceptional Children

Recent federal support programs for education in the United States have emphasized innovation and evaluation. Little attention has been given to the evaluation problem. Special education bears a special responsibility because it has been a favored area in recent federal legislation. Despite many difficult technical and psychological problems, efforts must be made to meet the rising problem of evaluation.

PL 89–10 and its amendment, TL 89–313, provide financial assistance for handicapped children programs. Funds are to be used for the expansion of existing programs and the initiation of new ones. Sample programs in curriculum adjustment and instruction, identification and evaluation, administration, and inservice training are presented.

While research indicates that verbal pretraining has a positive influence on the discrimination learning performance of subjects of normal intelligence, a comparable influence has not been shown for other types of conceptual tasks for retarded subjects. The purpose of this experiment was to investigate the effects of stimulus pretraining on concept learning by subjects who had a “high risk” of being classified as mentally retarded at some future time. A group of 27 “higher risk” and 21 “lower risk” subjects was randomly divided into three pretraining groups: verbal label, attention, and control. Subsequent to pretraining on the stimuli used for Transfer Task 1, subjects in each group were presented with a concept learning task (Transfer Task 1). After reaching the criterion of learning on Transfer Task 1, subjects were presented with a second, new, concept learning task. Analysis of the data revealed that there were no significant performance differences between risk groups and that pretraining had a significantly positive effect on performance.

This study demonstrated that emotionally disturbed children in grades four, five, and six can be identified as effectively through use of a teacher rating scale and a group intelligence test as through use of these two sources of information plus arithmetic achievement, reading achievement, a modified sociometric technique (a class play), and a self-concept inventory. The teacher rating scale and group intelligence test results can be useful in making decisions as to which children should be referred to a psychologist for individual diagnostic study. While contributing little to prediction, other information such as achievement, sociometric status, and self-concept may prove useful in understanding and meeting pupil needs in the educational setting.

Blindness accompanied by another handicap does not invariably disqualify a child from benefiting from mobility education. A thorough evaluation must be made to determine whether and to what extent a child might benefit from lessons and how the additional handicap will necessitate a change in techniques. Work with multiply handicapped blind children may cause inhibitions on the part of parents and teachers. Therefore, for the child to receive value from the lessons, conferences are essential among parents, teachers, and the mobility instructors. Mobility instruction with a multiply handicapped blind child, as well as any blind child, involves more than the techniques of travel. Improvement of the self-image as a result of increased independence usually occurs. In addition, as a result of mobility instruction, children are better able to interact actively and directly with their environment and from it to acquire meaningful information.

The primary purpose of this study was to examine the educational achievements of hospitalized children as measured by standardized group achievement tests. The subjects consisted of the total school population of Ypsilanti State Hospital. Some longitudinal measured achievement data for males and females indicate a pattern of sex differences. Children who remained in the hospital school program in excess of ten months progressed educationally to the extent expected for their intellectual ability.

The development of the Illinois Test of Psycholinguistic Abilities has created a new tool for investigations of the characteristics of speech problems. Forty intellectually and physically normal children with functional defects of articulation were tested with the ITPA. Performance of the group was compared with normative data reported for the test. The subjects scored lower than the norms on all subtests at the two levels of the test. Subtests most affected were in the auditory vocal channel.