Overcorrection of Spelling Defilcits in Moderately Mentally Retarded Children

Abstract
The present study focused on the acquisition and retention of spelling by moderately mentally retarded children who had not been taught any spelling skills as a part of their academic curriculum. Overcorrection plus positive reinforcement was used as the teaching technique with four children in a multiple baseline design. During training the teacher pronounced the target word and the child wrote the word, saying aloud each letter as it was written. If the word was spelled incorrectly, the following procedure was undertaken: The teacher pronounced the word again, the subject pronounced the word, the teacher said aloud each letter of the word, and the subject said aloud each letter of the word as he or she wrote the word correctly. This sequence was repeated five times following a misspelled word. The results showed that all four children rapidly learned to spell the target words and maintained correct spelling of the words during the six-month follow-up period.

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