THE STUDY ON THE ATTAINMENT PROCESSES OF CONCEPTS IN MENTALLY RETARDED CHILDREN

Effects of Abstractness of Learning Materials

Abstract

This study attempts to investigate the effects in the achievement which mildly retarded children and normal children of same M. A. attains concepts at different abstractness.
Experiment I
Purpose: Exp. I is to examine the readiness of concept attainments of concrete objects, forms and numbers with retarded and normal children of same M. A.
Subjects: Ss consist of a group of 11 retarded childdren (IQ 60-78) and a group of 10 normal children (IQ 95-104), the groups being matched on the basis of M. A.(8 years 6 months).
Materials and Procedure: The materials in this concept attainment consists of three categories-concrete objects, forms and numbers. Each category consists of 2 concepts with equal levels of abstractness. Nonsense syllables are assciated with these 6 concepts. Six drawing represents a typical example of six concepts respectively. 2 serieses are used preliminary learning ones and 13 serieses are used learning ones, the series being consisted of six different drawings. Ss were required to learn the names (nonsense syllables) of drawings presented to them singly and successively, in one after another series. The criterion of concept attainment was 5 successive correct responses through the drawing of the series. Ss were allowed to make 65 trials at the maximum.
Results were as follows:
(1) In the both groups of retarded and normal Ss, concepts of concrete objects were attained rapidly than that of forms and numbers.
(2) There were no significant differences between performances of groups of retarded and normal Ss in concepts of concrete objects. But performances of retarded group was significantly inferior to that of normal group in concepts of forms and numbers.
Experiment II
Purpose: Exp. II is to examine the effects on abstractness of learning materials in dicrimination reversal shift.
Subjects: Ss consists of a group of 30 retarded children (IQ 50-80) and a group of 30 normal children (IQ 97-128), the groups being matched on the basis of M. A.(6 years old).
Materials and procedure: Discrimination reversal shift tasks consists of Task I (concrete objectssize), Task II (concrete objects-number) and Task III (form-number). Dimensions consists of two equal values, respectively. The criterion of learning for initial and reversal learning was 9 correct responses in 10 trials and 5 consecutive correct responses in the last half of 10 trials. Testing was terminated after 60 trials for Ss did not reach this criterion on both learnings.
Results were as follows:
(1) In the initial learning, the mean number of trials needed to attain concepts in Task III was more than that in Task I and Task II.
(2) Both groups were difficult to reverse in Task I (especially, dimension of size) and this tendency was more remarkable in retarded group than normal group.
(3) Furthermore, it was founded the tendency that normal group was easy to reverse in the tasks, while retarded group was difficult to reverse in Task II and Task III.