Structured Activities in Perceptual Training to Aid Retention of Visual and Auditory Images.

The experimental program in structured activities in perceptual training was said to have two main objectives: to train children in retention of visual and auditory images and to increase the children's motivation to learn. Eight boys and girls participated in the program for two hours daily for a 10-week period. The age range was 7.0 to 12.10 years, and the IQ range was 63 to 113. All members of the group were functionally unable to read from the Oral Reading Survey Test taken from the "Reader's Digest." The program exposed the children to multiple experiences that allowed them to retain both visual and auditory abstract word forms. Instructional materials and approaches used were various games, filmstrips, story telling, athletics, work sheets, records, perceptual learning aids, pictures for discussion, tactile and kinesthetic aids, and experience charts. The children were taught as a group, except for two weekly 30-minute sessions with each individual. A significant part of the experiment was thought to be the formulation of a global clue pattern that aided both recognition and recall. The first 52 words taught were those words to which the children had been exposed. An additional 48 words were words of comparison, and the last 50 words were the most common nouns used. A pretest posttest design indicated that the program was successful. (CB)