Diagnostic prescriptive perceptual training with mentally retarded children

This study was designed to ascertain the extent to which the learning efficiency of mentally retarded children would be increased when the stronger of two perceptual modalities (auditory or visual) was matched to a unisensory auditory or visual perceptual curriculum. The study was conducted in two phases, an auditory perceptual training phase and a visual perceptual training phase. There were no significant differences in the adjusted mean scores between a Hawthorne group and the two groups receiving prescriptively matched unisensory visual and auditory perceptual curricula. All groups demonstrated significant gains on the criterion posttest measures. There were no significant interactions between measured perceptual strengths and the two types of perceptual interventions. In short, diagnostic prescriptive teaching utilizing the perceptual modality of greater measured strength (or weakness) failed to achieve initial teaching success.