Relative Effectiveness of Three Methods of Reading Instruction in Developing Specific Recall and Transfer Skills in Learners with Moderate and Severe Mental Retardation

The relative effectiveness of three instructional procedures (sight word, fading, tactile-kinesthetic) in teaching students with moderate to severe mental retardation to read a series of monosyllabic words was investigated. In addition, the relative effectiveness of each approach in teaching students generalized reading skills when presented with novel untaught words was also studied. Results indicated all three reading approaches were superior to the control noninstructional condition in learning to read words specifically taught. However, no one experimental condition was superior to the others. No significant differences were found in the acquisition of skills in reading novel untaught words.