Teaching jewish mentally-retarded youngsters holiday awareness through symbols

The purpose of the study was to test the use of various religious symbols to teach Jewish mentally-retarded youngsters enhanced familiarity with certain Jewish holidays. The participants included 8 students aged from 12-23 years old with various degrees of moderate to severe mental handicap. The study group met eight hours weekly (2 hours biweekly) for a total of 12 weeks. Four categories of questions involving nine different symbols were used. Baseline values were determined in pre- and post-testing. Results demonstrated that all students completing the study showed improvements in symbol recognition. We conclude that use of symbols can provide useful tools to improve communication with mentally retarded individuals.