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To investigate the effects of goal setting upon the spelling performance of educable mentally retarded male adolescents, comparisons were made between institutionalized and non-institutionalized subjects on the effects of goal setting and of task difficulty upon performance. A pilot study developed appropriate educational tasks for use in later testing with standardization of instructions and experimental procedures. Forty institutionalized and 40 special education educable mentally retarded male adolescents, randomly selected from among the 93 pilot study subjects, were assigned to one of the following four treatment groups: easy task-knowledge of past performance plus statement of goal, hard task-knowledge of past performance plus statement of goal, easy task-knowledge of past performance only, and hard task-knowledge of past performance only. The 80 subjects were tested alone on the spelling tasks by a single experimenter. Results indicated that higher scores were associated with goal setting than with feedback information only, and that higher scores were associated with the easy task rather than with the hard task. The expectation that goal setting would be superior to non-goal setting in terms of performance on a hard task but not on an easy task was upheld for the public school sub-sample but not for the institutionalized sub-sample. (Author/LE)

WORKING FROM A POPULATION OF SEVERELY AND PROFOUNDLY RETARDED RESIDENTIAL SCHOOL PATIENTS, AN ATTEMPT WAS MADE TO DEVISE AN EXPERIMENTAL PROGRAM FOR TRAINING SUBJECTS ON SELECTED WORKSHOP TASKS. TASK ANALYSIS WAS EMPLOYED TO DESCRIBE THE RESPECTIVE VOCATIONAL ENVIRONMENTS AND TO SPECIFY BEHAVIORAL REQUIREMENTS. TRAINING PROGRAMS BASED UPON THE SKINNERIAN PRINCIPLES OF SHAPING, OPERANT DISCRIMINATION, AND CHAINING OF RESPONSES WERE THEN DEVELOPED AROUND THE RESULTS OF THE TASK ANALYSIS. A PRELIMINARY STUDY WAS CONDUCTED TO DETERMINE THE RESPONSE ACQUISITION CHARACTERISTICS OF A RANDOM SAMPLE OF 10 SUBJECTS. THE DATA SUGGEST THAT THE ACQUISITION OF COMPLEX CHAINS OF OVER 100 DISCRETE BEHAVIORS IS REFLECTED IN POSITIVELY ACCELERATED EXPONENTIAL CURVES AND ARE, IN GENERAL, CONSISTENT WITH BEHAVIORAL PREDICTIONS DERIVED THROUGH THE AFOREMENTIONED PRINCIPLES. A SECOND STUDY WAS CONDUCTED TO TEST THE EFFECTS OF TWO REINFORCEMENT PROCEDURES ON THE MAINTENANCE OF THE ACQUIRED CHAINS, EMPLOYING TWO GROUPS OF 11 RANDOMLY SELECTED SUBJECTS. THE CONTROL GROUP WAS EXPOSED TO RELATIVELY LOW BUT CONSTANT LEVELS OF SOCIAL REINFORCEMENT. THE EXPERIMENTAL GROUP RECEIVED EXTRINSIC (TOKEN) REINFORCERS DELIVERED IN ACCORDANCE WITH PRESCRIBED SCHEDULES. THE RESULTS SUGGEST THAT SCHEDULES EXTRINSIC REINFORCEMENT MAINTAINED HIGHER AND MORE STABLE RATES OF VOCATIONAL BEHAVIOR THAN ESSENTIALLY NON-CONTINGENT SOCIAL REINFORCEMENT. A BIBLIOGRAPHY LISTS 52 REFERENCES. TABLES, FIGURES, AND APPENDIXES ARE INCLUDED. (AUTHOR)