The effects of metacognitive strategy training on the social executive competence of moderately retarded children
Abstract
The purpose of this investigation was to examine the effects of the treatment conditions (a) formal plus informal metacognitive strategy training, (b) informal metacognitive strategy training-only, and (c) no training, on the social executive competence of moderately retarded students. Additionally, the three groups of moderately retarded students were compared to a no-treatment group of nonretarded peers. Further, generalization of effects were measured. This study took place in two inner-city public schools in a large urban city. The subjects were 27 students classified as moderately retarded, plus 9 MA-matched nonretarded kindergarten students. In order to measure social executive competence, the social portion of the Bronson Social and Task Skill Profile was administered in the students' classrooms prior to the treatment, and again immediately following treatment. In addition, the inventory was administered in a different location, during the same time period as the posttreatment test sessions. The three dependent variables measured in this study were: (a) social competence, (b) social skill, and (c) use of time. The hypotheses were; (a) the two experimental retarded groups will score significantly higher than the comparison no-treatment retarded group on all dependent variables; (b) there will be no significant difference in the experimental retarded groups' mean scores and their nonretarded peers on all dependent variables; (c) the comparison no-treatment mentally retarded group will score significantly lower than their nonretarded peers on all dependent variables. One-way analyses of covariance were computed to test the hypotheses. Analysis of all data led to the following conclusions: (a) the metacognitive plus executive training group and the executive-only training group performed significantly better than the no-training mentally retarded group on all variables measured; (b) there was no significant difference between the mean scores of the experimental retarded groups and their nonretarded peers on any variables; and (c) the no-treatment mentally retarded group scored significantly lower than their nonretarded peers on all variables. Further, the effects of treatment generalized to a different setting than that used in training. Thus, all hypotheses were confirmed. In addition, there was no significant difference between the two experimental groups on any dependent variable.
Subject Area
Educational psychology|Special education
Recommended Citation
Rosenthal, Andrea Lynne, "The effects of metacognitive strategy training on the social executive competence of moderately retarded children" (1990). ETD Collection for Fordham University. AAI9034635.
https://research.library.fordham.edu/dissertations/AAI9034635
