Thesis (M.A.)--University of Canterbury, 2006. / Typescript (photocopy). Includes bibliographical references (leaves 127-149). Also available via the World Wide Web.

Thesis (M.A.)--Northern Kentucky University, 2006. / Made available through ProQuest. Publication number: AAT 1435899. ProQuest document ID: 1136092811. Includes bibliographical references (p. 61-68)

D.Ed. (Educational Psychology) / This study is concerned with the acquisition of language skills by the learning disabled child. A thorough literature survey was conducted, in which the acquisition of both the oral language and the written word were investigated. The survey reveals the importance of certain prerequisites for the mastering of language skills. The research also identifies the causes for and consequences of delay in language development. As a result of this survey, the importance of auditory perceptual skills in the acquisition of reading and spelling performances is emphasized in the design of a model for language acquisition. This survey was conducted to design a model for the acquisition of language skills, with special emphasis on auditory perception. Auditory perception skills are used as aids in the reading process to acquire the necessary skills to decode unfamiliar words in the text to be read. In the design of the model attention was given to the relevant and important matters as described in the literature, as well as to some didactical principles in the teaching of the learning disabled. The design of the model is based on the guidelines as deduced from the description as found in the literature, as well as the investigator's own empirical experience for a number of years in the teaching of identified learning disabled children in an aid class of the TED. This model was applied with great success on a group basis in an aid class at a primary school. It was also successfully applied on a great number of children in need of individual remedial teaching. The applicability and value of the model are verified by an ideographic survey conducted on the pupils in the aid class. A case study on six pupils is described in the thesis and the expected improvement in reading and spelling performance is verified.

An acquisition criterion, more commonly known as “mastery criterion” is an instructor-established standard of performance that may signal the acquisition of a novel skill or the conclusion of a phase of intervention. When teaching new behaviors, researchers and practitioners in the field of Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) apply some type of criterion for the learner to achieve. The purpose of the following studies was to evaluate the effects of acquisition criteria on skill acquisition in addition to other components of mastery such as response maintenance and stimulus generalization. In Experiment I (Wong et al., 2021), I conducted a systematic comparison of two applications of acquisition criteria. I selected four participants to teach 40 novel sight words using learn unit instruction. The participants were between the ages of 5 and 7 years old and diagnosed with developmental disabilities. I equated the target operants and quasi-randomly assigned 20 sight words in one acquisition criterion condition and 20 sight words in another acquisition criterion condition. In one condition, Set Analysis (SA), the acquisition criterion was applied to a set of four operants. The other condition, Operant Analysis (OA), applied acquisition criterion to individual operants. The level of accuracy and the replication of the accuracy remained the same across conditions, and more specifically, a 100% accuracy across one replication session was utilized under OA and SA. The results of skill acquisition showed that all four participants learned a greater number of sight words under the OA condition compared to the SA condition within the same time frame. Response maintenance results suggested that SA produced more durable responses for three out of four participants. In Experiment II, I extended the findings of Experiment I by addressing some limitations and systematically replicating the procedures. I increased the number of replications of the acquisition criterion from 1 replication to two replications. I selected four new participants and taught them sight words under the OA application of acquisition criterion and the SA application of acquisition criterion. Similar to the findings of Experiment 1, the skill acquisition results showed all participants learned a greater number of operants under OA compared to SA. The response maintenance results showed that all four participants responded with 100% accuracy to a similar or higher percentage of operants under the OA condition compared to the SA condition, suggesting that the added replication to the acquisition criterion may have improved the durability of responses during four-week follow-up sessions. The findings of both Experiment I and Experiment II contributed to the small but growing body of literature demonstrating the parametric effects of acquisition criteria. However, small sample sizes in the existing acquisition criteria research limit the external validity of the findings. Thus, I conducted a descriptive analysis of every skill acquisition article published in 2017 to 2019 in three peer-reviewed behavioral journals, in order to address this limitation. I reported the general characteristics of over 200 articles targeting skill acquisition. Additionally, our analysis targeted the effects of acquisition-criterion levels and frequency of replications on response maintenance results and generalization results. Ultimately, the results provide evidence that acquisition criteria play an important role in the mastery of novel behaviors, which have practical implications for ABA clinicians and researchers.

published_or_final_version / Education / Master / Master of Education

Thesis (M. Phil.)--University of Hong Kong, 1997. / Includes bibliographical references (leaf 133-141).

The purpose of this study was to identify team development activities which occurred in public elementary schools during the implementation year of the Teacher Assistance Team (TAT) and determine if there were any significant differences between highly effective and less effective teams. The sample under study consisted of 42 elementary schools which were implementing the Teacher Assistance Team model during the 1983-84 school year. A questionnaire survey instrument was used to obtain information from the schools regarding team development activities. School staff were asked to respond to eight general areas thought to impact upon the adoption of the Teacher Assistance Team model in the school. These areas were level of service delivered, effectiveness of service delivered, personnel training, team membership, scheduling of meetings, principals' support strategies, technical assistance needs, and teacher reactions to the team process. Statistical analysis revealed the high and low service teams did not differ significantly in school enrollment, personnel trained, scheduling of team meetings, or 26 of the 27 support strategies employed by building principals. However, the analysis indicated significant differences between the high and low service levels. The high service teams operated for a larger proportion of the months possible; served a larger proportion of the student enrollment; and considered more cases per month and per team than did the low service teams. Additionally, the high service teams attempted to resolve a larger proportion of team development problems and actually resolved more problems than the low service teams. Building principals among the high service teams demonstrated more of a commitment to the team process by personally selecting team members and requiring that teachers experiencing learning or behavior problems in the classroom refer to the team for assistance. The results of this study hold implications for teachers and school administrators. Recommendations were developed enabling state and local educational agency personnel and building principals to increase the effectiveness of Teacher Assistance teams during the first year of the team's operation in the school. Future research is directed to address three outcomes of the team process. These are: referral and cost effectiveness; classroom intervention; and teacher satisfaction.

published_or_final_version / Social Work / Master / Master of Social Work

This study was designed to determine the factorial validity of specific components of the Reitan-Indiana Neuropsychological Battery with a learning disabled population. Scores of 42 children, 38 males, 4 females, ages 6.2 to 8.8 years were compiled on specific tests of the Reitan-Indiana. Principal component factoring of the original correlation matrix was followed by principal factoring, using a 4 factor solution; varimax rotation with six iterations produced the desired reduction of the correlation matrix; four factors emerged for the learning disabled population, which accounted for 53% of the variance: verbal intelligence, psychomotor speed, achievement, and memory. The factor structure that emerged was not consistent with the surface factors of the battery as conceptualized by its author suggesting that this battery may lack construct validity when used with a learning disabled population.

This study investigated the development of acquisition and long term retention processes in Learning Disabled (LD) and Non-Learning Disabled children aged 7-12. One hundred six subjects were randomly assigned to memorize either a list of unrelated words (with free recall), or a list of taxonomically related words (with recall cued by category). Each subject had a 16 word list presented in visual and auditory modes. The repeated recall paradigm alternated study and test trials, with a buffer activity between trials. The acquisition phase ended when the subject reached 100% criterion. After an interval of two weeks, each subject was given 5 additional recall tests. Acquisition results indicated significant main effects for age, group (LD, Non-LD) and list type (unrelated, categorized) on measures of trial-of-last-error and total-errors. Overall, the groups which acquired the lists most quickly were the older and Non-LD subjects, with the categorized list. There was a List x Group interaction on the trial-of-last-error. With the categorized list, only age was significant, and conversely, with the unrelated list, only group was significant. On the retention measures, there were main effects for list and group, with a List x Group interaction. The only significant age effect was with total-words on the categorized list. Over the five trials (repeated measures), there was a significant effect for trials. A consistent hypermnesia effect (increase in net recall) was predominant. Further model-based analyses (Brainerd, Kingma, Howe, & Reyna, 1988) revealed storage failure, rather than retrieval failure to be the major action in children's forgetting. Learning Disabled children had significantly more storage failure than the Non-LD children. Both groups had more storage failure on the unrelated lists. There was retrieval relearning with all groups. Results are discussed within the framework of the disintegration/redintegration theory, which pertains to the gradual weakening and redintegration of bonds that unite features to form a trace.