Multisensory Mathematics for Children With Mild Disabilities

I examined the effects of a multisensory program (the TOUCH MATIP program1; Bullock, Pierce, & McClellan, 1989) on the acquisition of addition and subtraction skills by students with mild disabilities. I taught three elementary students with mild disabilities (learning disabilities and mental handicaps) to use the TOUCH MATH counting technique for addition and subtraction problems within the context of a multiple-probe design across math skills. Target skills included (a) adding two-digit numbers with regrouping, (b) adding columns of two-digit numbers with regroup- ing, (c) subtracting single-digit numbers from numbers up to 18, (d) subtracting two-digit numbers with regrouping, and (e) subtracting three-digit numbers with regrouping. Results showed significant gains in acquisition of target skills for all three subjects. Maintenance and generalization results also were observed in that the subjects maintained mastery-level performance on all skills and generalized the TOUCH MATH strategies to novel math problems. I discuss these results in relation to the use of a multisensory counting approach with students with mild disabilities.