Pxycbological Reporfs, 1998, 82, 1051-1056. O Psychological Repons 1998 ACQUISITION OF BASIC CONCEPTS BY CHILDREN WITH INTELLECTUAL DISABILITLES USING A COMPUTER-ASSISTED LEARNING APPROACH ' C. ALCALDE, J. I. NAVARRO, E. MARCHENA, AND G. RUIZ University of Cadiz, Spain Summary.-Computer-assisted learning can be an efficient learning-teaching pro- cedure. Although there is an extensive educational s o h a r e tradiuon for this ap- proach, few have better performance than standard drii-and-practice methods. In this work, the specific software "Let's Play With. . ." was designed to teach concepts of colours, shapes, and body position to children with intellectual disabilities. The soh- ware structure follows the Gagne instructional design and applied behaviour analysis. The program was carried out with 39 boys and 21 girls who were special education students in the Cadiz School District. Statistically signi€icant differences were found between groups taught with and without the software. The expansion of computer technology in the last twenty years has al- lowed design of high qu&ty software which is easy to use and is aimed at improving the learning conditions of students with intellectual disabhties (Crest, 1991; Gardner & Bates, 1991; Rojewski & Schell, 1995; Sepehr & Harris, 1995). Two trends have emerged as important goals, to develop soft- ware that makes it easier to learn new topics using computers as a fachtative interface for learning (Shapiro, Tauber, & Traunmuller, 1996) and as a mechanism for improving communication between users and their environ- ment. This is the case of augmentative communication (Vanderheiden & Crest, 1992) or the use of robotics (Howell, Martz, & Stanger, 1996). This paper belongs in the former as its focus is on development and testing of ed- ucational software for students with intellectual disabilities. As educational software has proliferated, many users find assessment ddficult (Howell, Heward, & Swassing, 1995). So systematic evaluations of software are useful. Educational sofnvare must be adapted to the setting of use, be appropriate to the students' current academic performance, and be suited to specific classroom activities. Most studies of the consequences of using computers in education have had descriptive goals. So more informa- tion on implementation and the appropriateness than on effectiveness is available (The Cognition and Technology Group at Vanderbilt, 1993). The development of projects in which computer technology is used by 'This work was su orted in part by Consejeria de Educacion y Ciencia-Junta de Andalucia, Research Group H&-056, and b DGICYT Grant No. PR94-260. Address reprint requests to Dr. J. I. Navarro. Deparunent o?~sycholo~y, University of Cadiz, 11510 Pueno Real-Cadiz, Spain or e-mail (jose.navarro@uca.es).