Establishing Phoneme Blending in Trainable Mentally Retarded Children

Abstract

The present study evaluated a program for establishing sound blending and word skills in trainable mentally retarded students. Seven subjects participated. Sound blending was taught in six steps, using words as the beginning units. The training involved procedures to (a) gradually increase pauses between verbally presented stimuli (words, syllables, phonemes) and (b) initially use and then withdraw pictures for prompting blending responses. Word reading was taught in two steps, involving two- and three-letter words. A multiple-probe technique was used for each subject. The data indicated that (a) the procedures were effective for all steps and (b) the training of some steps resulted in increases in correct responding and/or appropriate response (blending and reading) approximations in other untrained steps.