Comparing the effectiviness and efficiency of four second constant time delay and simultaneous prompting procedures delivered to children with mental retardation by their siblings

IV ABSTRACT COMPARING THE EFFECTIVENESS AND EFFICIENCY OF 4 SEC CONSTANT TIME DELAY AND SIMULTANEOUS PROMPTING PROCEDURES DELIVERED TO CHILDREN WITH MENTAL RETARDATION BY THEIR SIBLINGS Elif Tekin Special Education Major Graduate School of Social Sciences, Anadolu University, April 1999 Advisor: Assoc. Prof. Gönül KIRCAALİ-İFTAR A parallel teratments design was used to compare the effectiveness and efficiency of 4 sec constant time delay and simultaneous prompting procedures on teaching animal names to children with mild and moderate mental retardation. The present study had two purposes: (a) Could sibling tutors use these two instructional procedures for instructing their siblings with mental retardation reliably? (b) Are there any differences between these two instructional procedures in terms of effectiveness and efficiency? Three children with mental retardation and their siblings who were trained as tutors participated in this study. A small grup teaching format consisting of describe- model-guided practice-feedback sequence was used to teach siblings how to use the two instructional procedures. The two procedures were delivered alternately by tutor siblings. Results showed that both procedures were equally effective in teaching animal names to the children with mental retardation. Efficiency data showed that the difference between two procedures was minimal. However, simultaneous prompting procedure seemed to be more efficient than 4 sec constant time delay. Maintanence data collected 1, 4, and 5 weeks after training indicated no difference between twoprocedures. When the generalization data for the two instructional procedures across all students were compared, simultaneous prompting procedures resulted in higher levels of generalization for all children. As conclusion, (a) Both procedures were implemented reliably by all typical sibling tutors, (b) Both procedures were equally effective in teaching animal names, (c) Simulatanous prompting procedure was more efficient than 4 sec constant time delay in terms of number of training errors through criterion and training time through criterion, (d) No difference was evident in maintanence data, (e) Higher generalization resulted through simultaneous prompting procedure. Future research is neeeded to support these findings.