Aplicação de um programa informatizado de ensino de leitura e escrita por familiares de indivíduos com deficiência intelectual

Abstract

Researchers have made great efforts on building effective teaching methodologies for learners with diverse repertoires. In this direction, a group of behavior analysts developed a computerized teaching program that has been widely used in laboratory context and has been recently used in school context. Satisfactory results have been obtained on teaching reading and writing basic skills in both contexts. The program, named Aprendendo a Ler e a Escrever em Pequenos Passos (ProgLeit), was developed based on literature on the formation of equivalence classes of stimuli. It has some of the features established as favorable for learning to read by anyone: speed and degree of difficulty are individually programmed and constant feedback is provided to the performance of the learner. Considering the positive results in controlled environments and school situation, it was possible to extend the controlled use of the teaching program to broader contexts, such as the student s residence. The application of the program in home context by relatives or families trained to monitor and record the sessions created the opportunity to benefit a greater number of children. This study evaluated reading learning by children with intellectual disabilities when trained on the tasks of Module 1 of ProgLeit by their relatives or families in their homes. Concomitantly, the behavior of relatives as ProgLeit monitors was evaluated. For this purpose, a computer with the program was provided for relatives for the duration of Module 1 application. The researcher had trained and supervised the relatives to provide constant monitoring and evaluation of results. Six students from a special school participated in this study, among which five have completed Module 1. Single subject design guided data analysis. Five out of the six students went from zero performance and less than 20% accuracy in reading words printed on pre-test for average performance in the pos-test was near to 89.3% for trained words and 52% for generalization words. Furthermore, they required a reduced number of sessions of each step to reach the learning criteria along the exposure to the procedure. These results replicated those obtained in studies conducted in laboratory and school settings with the same teaching program. The behavior of relative members as monitors was evaluated in terms of providing cues and application frequency. The number of cues provided by them decreased as the student reached the learning criteria in each step, showing greater efficiency teaching program to control the response of the learner. The control of some environmental variables related to the program application such as the local conditions where it is applied, the monitors training and the type of cue provided by them during the application may be important to obtain results even more promising for students with intellectual disabilities. The results indicate that the program application by relatives in the residence of the participants may be a promising learning condition for this population. Furthermore, data showed evidence of the generality of ProgLeit efficiency in other contexts as well as laboratory and school context.