to the child instructions and therapy under guidance during the later part of the semester. On the second session the parent will participate in discussions. During the second semester the parent, under guidance, will tutor the child and will be evaluated and instructed on her merits or shortcomings. An evaluation of the parental attitudes through the Pari Scale and a comparison of the two groups (parent tutoring own child/another child) will be reviewed by the staff. 9 longitudinal study will follow on a yearly basis. Techniques and procedures developed from this program will be planned for further expansion in the area of instructional education of the preschool deaf child. Title: Visual Psychophysics of School-Aged Children With Language Learning Problems. Principal investigator: Nancy E. Wood. Grantee: University of Southern California. Funds obligated: $129,166. Description: Research will compare the responses of approximately 125 children with language learning problems with those of approximately 125 children with normal language development along selected dimensions of visual psychophysics. Objectives will be (1) to compare two groups of children between the ages of 5 and 9 years in terms of their responses on selected tests of visual closure, figure ground relationships, and perceptual speed, (2) to analyze between and within groups variations of responses and to correlate these findings with responses on other test items related to speech and language learning, and (3) to study these data for implications which might contribute to the improvement of known methods or the development of new procedures to be used in the teaching of children with language disorders. Title: Using the Initial Teaching Alphabet to Improve Articulation. Grantee: Vanderbilt University. Beginning date: February 1966. Funds obligated: $36,700. Description: The purpose of this research is to develop a set of teaching materials to be used in correcting faulty speech articulation of preschool children and to test the efficacy of these materials in a pilot experiment. A sound symbol system based on the . . . Initial Teaching Alphabet.. will be employed. The symbols of the Initial Teaching Alphabet (in which there is one and only one symbol for each sound, unlike the duplications found in traditional written language) will be used in a series of teaching materials. Children will be trained to associate these visual characters with their auditory and verbal counterparts. Periodic checks of their progress will be made. Title: Speechreading Failure in Deaf Children. Principal investigator: Arthur I. Neyhus. Grantee: Northwestern University. Beginning date: December 1966. Funds obligated: $27,948. Description: A battery of psychological tests will be administered to 60 deaf children ranging in age from 4 to 9 years, divided into control and experimental groups of equal size. The experimental group will consist of those pupils in a training program for the deaf who have been unable to develop speechreading and language skills expected of deaf children of the same chronological age. The test battery will consist of two types of procedures: (A) tests which will provide diagnostic data on the child who is unable to develop competency in speechreading and (B) procedures which will provide data concerning the reasons for the failure to develop speechreading competency. Title: Variations in Value Orientations of Parents of Academically Successful and Unsuccessful Children. Principal Investigator: Robert Currie. Grantee: University of Southern California. Funds obligated: $9,000. Description: Investigation will be made to determine if academic failure is related to attitudes toward life which are learned unconsciously or covertly from parents. Specifically, the study will determine: (1) whether the value orientations of parents of academically unsuccessful children vary significantly from the values of parents of academically successful children and from verified, dominant American value patterns, and (2) whether such value patterns are correlated with a child's achievement. Interviews will be conducted with the parents of academically successful and unsuccessful children from the following populations: southern Caucasian, non-southern Caucasian, Mexican-American, migratory farm workers, urban middle class, rural middle class, Negro, and educable mentally retarded. The interview data will be correlated with the children's achievement test scores. Title: The Development of a Pre-School Curriculum for Severely Disabled Children. Principal investigator: Marie Meier. Grantee: Human Resources Center. Beginning date: June 1966. Funds obligated: $7,132. Description: A preschool curriculum and program will be established for physically disabled children of average or above average intelligence and with no severe retardation, brain damage, or emotional disturbance. The program will be aimed at helping the child develop physically, socially, emotionally, and in visual-motor skills. Children accepted into the program will be given a battery of psychometric and physical measures. At the end of the first year the same battery of tests will be administered to help determine the effectiveness of the program. Preliminary evidence of the values of a school readiness program for the physically disabled child is anticipated. Title: A Demonstration Home Training Program for Parents of Preschool Deaf Children. Principal investigator: June B. Miller. Grantee: University of Kansas Medical Center. Funds obligated: $146,140. Description: A model teaching program for the parents of preschool deaf children will be established and evaluated. A residence will be converted into a demonstration home. In this setting three teachers of the deaf will involve parents, through demonstration and participation, in teaching communication skills to their deaf children. The parents will be shown techniques for teaching speech, speech reading, and auditory function. Video: tape recordings of the demonstration sessions will be used as both teaching and evaluation tools. Measurement scales and techniques will be periodically used to evaluate development of enrolled children in speech, language, and auditory function. Publication of results and close communication with other institutions engaged in similar work are planned. Title: The School Adjustment of Post-Meningitic Children-A Study of Contributing Factors and Remedial Dimensions. Principal investigator: John E. Pate and Warren W. Webb. Beginning date: August 1967. Funds obligated: $86,999. Description: From medical and school records, 25 known post-meningitic children will be identified among primary students. They will be given educational, psychological, perceptual motor, neurological, diagnostic tests related to minimal brain damage, classroom teachers will be interviewed and preschool home and child-rearing influences will also be examined. The post-meningitic children will be compared on these measures to matched control children who have no evidence of early illnesses indicative of central nervous system involvement. Data will be analyzed by the statistical procedures detailed in the body of the proposals. Edu cators, psychologists, physicians, and social workers individually and collec tively, will evaluate and interpret the results to resolve the following questions: (A) Do post-meningitic school children have sequelae which impair educational progress? (B) What are the characteristics and dimensions of their behavioral deficits and to what extent do preschool and primary grade experiences affect these deficits? (C) Could some of the behavioral deficits be observed quite early in childhood and can a simple yet valid method be devised to identify preschool post-meningitic children who are highly prone to school problems? (D) Are deficits of post-meningitic children amenable to preschool intervention and what might be the nature of that intervention? (E) Can these preschool screening and intervention patterns be adapted to four different research communities where educational and medical facilities vary? Title: A Language Development Program for Mentally Retarded Children. Grantee: The University of Kansas. Beginning date: September 1967. Description: The purpose of this project is to initiate an extensive language development program for severely, moderately, and mildly retarded children residing in an institution. We hope to demonstrate that intensive and systematic language training and stimulation for these children will augment appreciably their growth in psycholinguistic abilities as well as related intellectual, social, and emotional areas. As such, psycholinguistic development is preceived as precursory to an effective habilitative program which will enable the child to someday be released back into the community. The language development program described in this proposal is intended to increase everyday language usage. Accordingly, we are emphasizing a more global and functional language training program with minimal concern for specific speech deviations. Title: Conjoint Parent-Teacher Participation in Training Young Psychotic Children for School Readiness-A Longitudinal Evaluation. Principal investigator: Eric Schopler. Grantee: University of North Carolina. Beginning date: January 1968. Description: Not available. Title: A School Program for Young Mongoloid Children-A Curriculum Development Project. Principal investigator: James C. Chalfant. Grantee: University of Illinois. Beginning date: September 1967. Funds obligated: $171,075. Description: The purpose of this study is to develop an integrated training program for children with Down's Syndrome, which is based on their observed assets and deficits. It is proposed that the program consist of: (A) An intensive program of behavior shaping related to self-help skills such as eating, toilet training and dressing, (B) A systematically developed program of cognitive and language training including perception, association and expression, and (C) The use of recreational activities to assist in the development of language, motor and social skills. Title: The Efficacy of Utilizing a Phoenetic Alphabet in Articulation Therapy with Preschool Children. Principal investigator: Ronald Goldman. Grantee: Vanderbilt University. Funds obligated: $74,867. Description: Two equated groups of children with articulation problems from 4 years 7 months to 5 years 6 months will be compared in their response to two approaches to articulation training. Each approach will be carried out in two therapy environments (individual and group) for a period of one year. The effectiveness of the experimental procedures will also be compared to a group therapy control procedure utilizing the Peabody Language Development Kit, Level P. The PLDK program which lacks speech sound training will provide a measurement of the Hawthorne effect. In order to study the value of the programs, changes in the following parameters will be investigated: (1) articulation, (2) speech sound discrimination, (3) auditory memory and (4) phonemic synthesis. Differences in mean scores on each criterion measure will be tested for significance through a series of orthogonal comparisons aimed at assessing: (A) effectiveness of the two therapy approaches as opposed to a PLDK control group, (B) differential efiectiveness of the two therapy procedures under study, (C) differential effectiveness of individual and group therapy environments, (D) interaction effects of type of therapy with therapy environments. Title: Analysis of a Recorded Test for the Measurement of Hearing in Children. Principal investigator: Earl R. Harford. Grantee: Northwestern University. Beginning date: June 1968. Funds obligated: $16,545. Description: To study the validity and reliability, then make available to professional workers, a test which will allow clinicians to plot an abreviated audiometric configuration on young children without using special tape recording containing filtered environmental sounds. Precedure two populations of young children who give consistent and reliable responses to pure tone stimuli utilizing some form of conditioned play audiometry will be studied-20 normal hearing children from 3 to 0 months, 4 years 6 months, 40 hearing impaired children of the same ages, 20 children with high frequency losses, and 20 children with flat audiometric configurations. Title: Bennington County Day Care Program for Pre-School Mentally Retarded Children. Principal investigator: W. Earle Forman. Grantee: Beinnington Friends of Retarded Children, Inc. Funds obligated: $80,423. Description: The primary objective is to help mentally and physically handicapped children at the earliest possible age to develop to their greatest potential by exposing them to group experiences. By meeting other children and adults in a controlled environment, they will be exposed to educational and play experiences not available in most of the homes. A second objective is that of helping the children develop muscular, physical, and mental coordination, thereby enabling them to make known their needs. A third objective is that of preparing the children for admission into the special education classes in the public school system, and of training them to attain a degree of self care. A fourth objective is to train them to perform some helpful tasks in the home, particularly where entrance into a special class is not a realistic goal. An additional objective will be to relieve the mothers of the constant care and responsibility of the children for a few hours daily, enabling them to deal with the children more patiently in those hours when they are at home. Through visits and consultations between staff and parents it is hoped to educate parents in the special care needed for these children. Title: A Study of Evoked Potentials to Auditory Stimuli in Sedated Subjects. Principal investigator: Paul H. Skinner. Grantee: University of Arizona. Beginning date: February 1969. Funds obligated: $47,119. Description: The most compelling problem in the work with handicapped children is to determine the level and adequacy of their hearing. This is a basic assessment which is imperative in order to enable appropriate medical referral, educational placement and training. Early assessment of hearing is of paramount importance in the understanding development of communication skills upon which education is based. Normal adults and preschool children, and handicapped preschool children would be studied under sedation by evoked response audiometry, different sedatives would be studied in light of their effects and interaction on the auditory evoked response, subject maturation, sleep onset and sleep stage, and background EEG. Title: Mediated Language Acquisition for Dysphasic Children. Grantee: Monterey Institute for Speech and Hearing. Beginning Date: April 1969. Funds obligated: $173,375. Description: The Monterey Institute for Speech and Hearing staff have been piloting the development of a method of perceptual, social and language learning for dysphasic children at their day school for dysphasic children called the Children's House. This method, called mediated language acquisition, is an embodiment of the positive aspects of both programming and behavior modification. Pilot data have been collected which point up the effectiveness and efficiency of these experimental procedures and their correlated subsystems. The object of the present study, then, is to accomplish the following goals: To verify and crystallize the marriage of programming and behavior modification in an effort to establish the most efficient and effective procedure for the learning of language among dysphasic children; To develop appropriate instrumentation and mechanical control over the presented stimuli and their consequences to provide the most economical and efficient progress possible; To develop programs of perceptual and language instruction which are more systematic and more effective than current materials in teaching language skills. Title: An Experimental Home Teaching Program for Pre-School Deaf-Blind Children. Principal investigator: Philip Hatlen. Grantee: Frederic Burk Foundation for Education, San Francisco State College. Beginning date: June 1969. Funds obligated: $96,383. Description: A combination preschool and home teaching program will enable each teacher to work with deaf-blind children twice a week in a classroom and once a week in their homes. The classroom will be equipped with an auditory trainer, television camera, motor development equipment and the usual preschool classroom equipment and materials. The classroom will be located, if possible, in an existing school or nursery school so that playground equipment will also be available. Since there are 20 deaf-blind children of preschool age reported in San Francisco County (Lowenfeld, 1968) the population will be selected primarily from this group. The children will be selected on the basis of age-younger children given preference--until the population of 12 has been secured. The children will be accepted if they are diagnosed as having a combination of hearing loss and visual impairment regardless of the degree of impairment or the presence of additional handicaps provided they have not been accepted into another program. A parent must accompany his child to the twice-weekly school setting, thus limiting the population to those within commuting distances and to those parents willing to participate. Title: A Planning Grant to Establish a Center for Preschool Education of Handicapped Children. Principal investigator: Ray H. Barsch. Grantee: Southern Connecticut State College. Beginning date: November 1968. Funds obligated: $26,378. Description: To establish a center for preschool education of handicapped children between the ages of 2-6 years in conformity to Connecticut school law which mandates the development of school programs to serve this age level beginning in September 1969. This center will be established on the campus of Southern Connecticut State College for the purpose of preparing teaching specialists at graduate level to develop and conduct preschool programs for the entire spectrum of handicapping conditions. An interdistrict cooperative center formed by eight school systems adjacent to the college, the Clifford Beers Guidance Clinic, the New Haven Regional Center for the Retarded and the Psychoeducational Clinic of Yale University have joined forces to achieve the goals of this center. An experimental model of a functional triad of demonstration curricula for both parents and children across a wide spectrum of disability categories offered in four contrasting settings in direct unity with |