Simulated and community-based instruction involving persons with mild and moderate mental retardation

In this study of simulated instruction and/or community training of four functional living tasks was compared across groups of adolescents and young adults with mild and moderate retardation. Forty individuals participated in the assessment and training activities of this study, including 20 participants with mild retardation and 20 individuals with moderate retardation. A mixed factorial design was used to evaluate differences associated with level of mental retardation, simulated versus community-based instruction, and assessments in school and community settings. Participants with mild retardation performed better than their counterparts with moderate retardation on the simulated tasks and in the community settings. Participants with mild retardation were more successful in generalizing from the simulated instructional experiences to the community settings than were their counterparts with moderate retardation. However, in many of the situations, community training was sufficiently powerful to eliminate any advantage associated with some of the participants having experienced prior simulated instruction. Results are discussed in relation to the need to more closely examine the design and delivery of functional living skills instruction involving individuals with different levels of mental retardation. Specifically, the effectiveness of instructional simulations for teaching functional living skills does not appear to be uniform across level of retardation and targeted tasks. The highest priority question no longer appears to be whether or not simulated versus community-based instruction is more efficacious. Future research might more productively focus on the quality of different instructional simulations in combination with community assessment and/or training opportunities for teaching functional living skills to persons who experience different levels of mental retardation.