M.Bibl. / The ability to read has particular psychological and educational value for the mentally handicapped pupil. This entails amongst other things the raising of the achievement ceiling of the pupiI because of stimulation and enrichment arising from contact with reading material, as well as achieving of academic goals and the opportunity of becoming and remaining functionally literate. The latter provides the opportunity for dignified adaptation in society. The reading-ability of mentally handicapped pupils can be improved with practice. Mentally handicapped pupils do however have particular characteristics and not just any reading material can be made available to them. Reading material provided for these pupils should be in concordance with their capabilities, needs and interests to ensure that mentally handicapped pupils come into contact with books that they can master and derive benefit from. The formative value of reading and the characteristics, needs and interests of mentally handicapped pupils were identified and were used as a base for the formulation of a variety of criteria that can be used to select reading material for these pupils. A questionnaire was designed based on Fry's readability graph and the identified criteria for selection. This questionnaire can be used for evaluating books to determine whether a book is a high interest low vocabulary book such as is needed for mentally handicapped pupils. This questionnaire provides a useful method for collecting suitable reading material. The questionnaire was used to identify fifty Afrikaans stories with various topics and content, as examples of suitable reading material for mentally handicapped pupils. The conclusion that was drawn is that there are enough high interest low vocabulary stories available in Afrikaans to provide for mentally handicapped pupils in special schools. The selection of such books is time consuming and should be undertaken on a co-operative base by teachers and librarians. The discerning selection of reading material is essential because mentally handicapped pupiIs can be motivated to want to read continuously if they perceive books to be manageable and interesting rather than threat.

How does the social worker respond to the disturbed child in direct treatment when working in a psychiatric clinic? In other words, in the one-to-one relationship with a child, what techniques does the social worker apply in order to enhance the child's emotional well-being? On what body of knowledge does the social worker base his choice of technique in a given situation? The present study is undertaken to explore these questions, with reference to the special circumstances of the psychiatrically-oriented clinic. In Child Guidance Clinics (specifically, the Children's Clinic: Burnaby, B.C.), social workers are under the supervision off psychiatrists as well, as senior social workers. The other consideration in this complex picture is children are not "miniature adults" - they present practical and theoretical differences from the adult client. It is not, therefore, a simple matter of applying casework skills worked out for adults to the direct treatment of children in a psychiatric clinic. To determine the specific techniques applied by the social workers, one written recording was selected from the caseload of each of a group of social workers. In addition, one fully tape-recorded interview was available for analysis. Each recording followed two criteria: (a) the recording showed workers' responses as well as the child's activities; (b) the children are between the ages of six and ten. This age span includes children old enough to verbalize to the extent that enables some verbal communication between worker and child, and because such children are young enough to be representative of the problems unique to disturbed children. This sample of techniques was analyzed according to two frameworks: (1) the accepted social work body of knowledge and (2) the psychoanalytic viewpoint as set out by Melanie Klein, this latter approach being utilized because it represents the view that children can be psychoanalyzed on the same basic principles as adults. The general psychoanalytic structure is chosen because of the type of psychiatric supervision received by social workers referred to above. On the whole, the workers' responses are clearly identifiable. Almost all of these responses corresponded to the description of social work techniques; only a few (four) corresponded to psychoanalytic techniques. The social work body of knowledge (including the principles, values, knowledge of human behavior, the caseworker-client relationship) was in the main utilized by the workers in the recordings selected, in spite of the different considerations presented in working with children and in spite of the psychoanalytically-oriented supervision. It appears that this supervision or consultation is utilized to increase the worker's understanding of the child, rather than utilized to apply psychoanalytic techniques directly. There is still room for further study, however, on the nature of psychiatric consultation. From such a small sample, the conclusions reached cannot be considered applicable to the clinic as a whole. Also, since the techniques analyzed were each applied in one interview out of a series of interviews, the benefit to the child of the worker's activities is not part of the assessment of this study. Preliminary analysis of this kind however is essential before these further studies can be properly undertaken. / Arts, Faculty of / Social Work, School of / Graduate

Mildly retarded children provide special problems for many professional disciplines giving services to children in our society. This study is intended to describe the nature of the performance and/or behavioral traits of these children which influenced parents to seek help from a professional person or influenced a professional person to give services to the child and his family. A sample of 65 children was selected from the Vancouver school system's Special classes for slow learners. Their parents were interviewed during the summer of 1967 by one interviewer. The difficulties that were described by parents were not limited to developmental lags or learning problems. They also included behavior problems in the home and community. The observations of this survey indicated that the nature of the problems, as felt by the parents, tended to change as the child passed through the childhood stages of development. The problems corresponded very closely to society's expectations as related to age-appropriate performance and behavior of the normal child. The type of help that was sought by the parents reflected the changing nature of their assessment of the problems. In infancy, the help sought was predominantly medical. In the toddler and preschool stages the type of help sought changed gradually from medical to educational and social services. During the school-age stage, the parents sought help from the greatest variety of sources, mainly from the school, but also including public health nurses, social workers, psychologists and psychiatrists. Factors other than the child's performance and/or behavior appeared to influence the patterns of help-seeking found among the parents but these were not fully assessed by this study. The parents were not always realistic in their appraisals of their child's abilities. Feelings of ambivalence, confusion and anxiety regarding the child's problems and the various professionals involved, were frequently noted. To generalize these findings from this sample of children in Special classes to the whole population of mildly retarded children was made difficult, by the method of sampling but one might speculate that differences between this sample and the population would be differences of degree rather than kind. / Arts, Faculty of / Social Work, School of / Graduate

Retardation of language development or articulatory proficiency is characteristic of children with specific organic or intellectual deficits. It is recognized that the moderately retarded preschool youngster is especially susceptible to delays in language acquisition probably as a concomitant attribute of general intellectual deficiency. The literature of learning and child development documents and highlights the significant growth experienced by the infant and preschool youngster long before he first enters school. The advent of preschool educational opportunities for exceptional children can be expected to prevent many of the debilitating results associated with general intellectual mental retardation. Research has demonstrated that much is to be gained through early childhood compensatory education. The evidence gained from programs of intervention in the area of language has effectively shown that intensive stimulation in school aged mildly and moderately retarded children results in gains in language performance. Similarly, investigations of language improvement in younger deprived children have had positive results. Consequently, two important facts are to be recognized: (a) It is possible to effect positive change in language ability of young children whose intellectual functioning is assumed capable of normalcy. (b) It is possible to effect positive change in language ability of older children whose intellectual capacities have been limited by organic or environmental factors. These lead to an important question, the subject of the research reported herein. Can language proficiency be effectively improved in moderately retarded preschool aged children? From the thirty-two children comprising the population of the preschool for the retarded at the Research Unit for Exceptional Children, University of British Columbia, sixteen children were selected to form the experimental and control groups in a sixteen week project studying the language performance of the children. The sixteen children were matched in pairs on the basis of age in months, length in preschool experience, raw score on the PPVT, and raw score on a modified Stanford Binet. Matched pairs were used to insure that the experimental and control groups were as nearly equivalent at the outset as possible. For sixteen weeks the experimental group participated for thirty minutes per day in a group oral language training program. For an equal period of time the control group participated in a non-directive program in which language activities were correlated with motor, sensory, and social activities. During posttesting sessions all the children were tested using the same, or equivalent forms of the pretest instruments. The difference between pretest to posttest events was considered to be a measure of change in language performance. Statistical analysis of these data was applied to determine significance. At the conclusion of the study the children of the experimental group scored significantly better than the children of the control group on all variables. Pretest to posttest experimental group gain was significant, while the same measure for the control group evidenced no measurable difference. While intergroup differences at the beginning of the study were negligible, the between-group differences after participation in oral language training were demonstrably significant. There were, therefore, important gains made by the experimental group, while no real gains were evidenced by the control group. It seems reasonable to assume from the data analyses that programed intervention in the language domain is both feasible and desirable for moderately retarded preschool children. The immediate effects of language training however, leave other questions unanswered and in want of further investigation. Questions regarding lasting effects of language intervention, as well as the degree of effective facilitation in learning of other skills as a result of language training, need investigation. It has been, however, demonstrated that the first step, that of immediate and positive change in language performance, can be facilitated by direct intervention in the language training of moderately retarded children. / Education, Faculty of / Educational and Counselling Psychology, and Special Education (ECPS), Department of / Graduate

The subjects who participated in this study, were twenty-one moderately mentally retarded children enrolled in Oakridge School for the mentally retarded in Vancouver, British Columbia. The I.Q. range of the subjects was approximately 30-51. The purpose of the study was to determine the effects of sensory-motor training on the visual perception and sensory-motor performances of the moderately retarded subjects. In addition, the investigation was also designed to question the claims of some proponents of perceptual-motor theory, who have suggested that improvement in the sensory-motor area leads to subsequent improvement in perceptual functioning. The subjects were divided into three groups of seven. Each group was then randomly distributed into one of three treatments. The treatments consisted of two sensory-motor training groups and a control group. The sensory-motor treatments consisted of one program based on the widely-practiced Kephart approach; the second was a series of activities designed by the experimenter. These two training programs allowed for a comparison of the relative effects of the individual treatments on the performance of the subjects. The two activity groups were subjected to thirty half-hour sessions of sensory-motor training over a seven and one-half week period. The control group spent a concurrent amount of time involved in regular special education classroom activities. The Frostig Test of Visual Perception and the Purdue Perceptual-Motor Survey were administered prior to and after the training period. The results were then statistically analysed by a complex analysis of variance and the Scheffe Technique. The following main conclusions were drawn. 1. In the area of visual perception, sensory-motor training was no more effective than regular special education activities in improving performance. 2. Sensory-motor training resulted in performance gains in the sensory-motor area. 3. Improvements in sensory-motor performance did not result in subsequent gains in the visual perception performance. 4. The two programs of sensory-motor training produced similar performances in both the visual perception and sensory-motor areas. / Education, Faculty of / Curriculum and Pedagogy (EDCP), Department of / Graduate

Includes bibliographical references / M.S. Florida State College for Women 1933

In our culture the ability to read holds an eminent position. Many of the ordinary practices of daily living are associated with reading. Comprehending labels, bank statements, signs, bill boards, newspapers, books, and letters are but a few of the items encountered by individuals daily. For successful: existence in society, each individual must be able to read with sufficient comprehension to enable him to carry on the normal procedures of life. The reading program of the schools has been a topic of extensive investigation in recent years. Educators, lay people, parents and students have discussed the methods and procedures employed in the present reading programs. Much emphasis in the discussions has been placed upon the youngsters in school who are not progressing at a rate associated with a particular grade level. / Typescript. / "June 1957." / "Submitted to the Graduate Council of Florida State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science." / Advisor: Sarah Lou Hammond, Professor Directing Paper. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 50-52).

No description available.

The deinstitutionalization movement has challenged administrators and professionals to develop new methods of providing services to handicapped clients who reside in geographically dispersed areas. Geographic dispersion limits the frequency of direct contact with clients and increases dependency on parents or paraprofessionals for program implementation and data collection. A difficulty is that these direct service providers' program implementation or data collection efforts may be reinforced infrequently. This problem may be especially acute when the service recipients are severely or profoundly handicapped. Such individuals have slow rates of learning thus making it difficult for the service providers to discern progress.

Thesis (Ed.D.)--Boston University