A language development program for severely handicapped children.

This article describes a program based on behavioral principles to develop verbal behavior in severely handicapped young children and designed to be conducted by college students. The results indicate that college students are able to apply their technical skills, obtained mainly from an increasing number of beha11iorally oriented courses offered at the undergraduate level, and make important contributions to the language development of severely handicapped children . These findings have implications with respect to the shortage of technical personnel in institutions and treatment centers. An effective program to produce functional speech or to stimulate language development in severely handicapped nonverbal children generally requires intensive individual attention. Unfortunately, in most educational settings, especially where the population consists of low functioning children, sufficient professional staff is not available to perform this function. Consequently, various nonprofessionals have been used to alleviate this shortage of personnel. For example, Guess and his associates (Guess, Rutherford, Smith & Ensminger, 1970; Guess, Smith, & Ensminger, 1971) in their work with institutionalized retarded children Michael J. Guralnick is Director of R esearch, National Children's Center, Washington, D. C. EXCEPTIONAL CHILDREN demonstrated that nonprofessionals can be taught to carry out effective language development programs designed mainly to remedy more general deficits in communicative speech. Fredericks, Baldwin, McDonnell , Hofmann, and Harter (1971) have taught parents to use behavior modification techniques to instruct their severely retarded children at home in a variety of skills, including language. Ludtke and Elliott ( 1969) have taught volunteers to function as adjuncts to the professional staff of institutions in a number of djfferent areas. They noted that college students would probably function well in the speech therapy program. Accordjng to a recent review by Gruver (1971 ), college student volunteers in mental health programs can apparently provide positive therapeutic gains, although firm conclusions as to their effectiveness must await more empirical evidence. It was also noted that one reason for these positive outcomes may be the ease with which college students are able to relate to and become involved with patients, especially children , as well as their more intense application to the tasks at hand. Cytryn and Uihlein (1965), taking advantage of these characteristics, asked high school and college student volunteers to establish positive relationships with retarded children. Although the instructional program for the volunteers was generally unstructured and the total time spent with each child not extensive, the children did apparently progress in terms of their social adjustment and interpersonal relationships. In more behaviorally oriented approaches, Davison ( 1965) taught college students to apply learning principles to the behavior of autistic