THE EFFECTS OF METACOGNITIVE STRATEGY TRAINING ON THE ACQUISITION ANDGENERALIZATION OF SOCIAL SKILLS

This study examined the effectiveness of a metacognitive strategy appr oach to train social skills to children with moderate mental retardati on between the ages of 9 and 14 and with mental ages of 3 through 7. T raining took place in the children's classrooms. Two approaches, one f ormal, the other informal, were used to train the participants. Result s indicated that both experimental groups acquired the targeted skills and generalized the skills to another setting. Further, two compariso n groups were used, children of an equal mental age without mental ret ardation and an equal chronological age group of children with mental retardation. On all variables tested, both experimental groups signifi cantly outperformed the chronological age peers and scored equally as well as their mental age peers.