Effect of Stimulus Shaping & Prompting in Developing Dressing Skills in Trainable Mentally Challenged Children among Age Group of 6-12 Years

Mental retardation is one of the most common neurological disorder in which there is deficit in mental, cognitive & adaptive skill areas3. The severities of mental retardation have been identified as mild, moderate, severe and profound. Children with mental retardation often do not learn these skills on their own. Through systematic efforts, it is possible to teach and train them in these skills. The techniques used to improve the adaptive skills include stimulus shaping, stimulus fading, forward & backward chaining etc. Among these stimuli shaping appears to be a highly successful way to teach various skills. The sample of 16 trainable mentally challenged children of age group 6-12 years were taken with purposive sampling technique. The Dressing skill observation rating scale was selected as method of data collection. The pretest was conducted with this rating scale. The experimental group was taught dressing skills with stimulus shaping and prompting and the control group without stimulus shaping and prompting for one month. The post test was conducted using the same rating scale. Results showed significant difference in mean pre test and mean post test dressing skill score in experimental group and mean post test dressing skill score of experimental and control group.