Teaching idiom comprehension to children with mental retardation.

Four children with intellectual disability joined a small class.

Each child listened to short stories that each held one idiom.

After the story the child picked the picture that showed what the idiom really meant.

The team tracked correct picks across days using a multiple-baseline design.

Every child started near zero and then climbed to high accuracy.

Most kids kept the skill weeks later and picked the right picture in new stories.

Using the idiom out loud was harder; expressive gains were mixed.

Garcia et al. (1973) taught sentence grammar to one girl with ID using drills and candy.

Chandler et al. (1992) show you can move from dry drills to rich stories and still win.

Sanders et al. (1989) found pictures slowed sound-blending for kids with ID.

Here, pictures helped because the task was picking meaning, not making sounds.

Lacroix et al. (2010) saw teens with Williams syndrome stay stuck on idioms even after years of talk therapy.

Their negative result warns us that general ID teaching may not fit every syndrome.

You now have a cheap, fast way to teach figurative language.

Write or find a 3-sentence story, drop the idiom in the last line, and show two pictures.

Ask the learner to point to the one that matches the hidden meaning.

Track daily, then test with brand-new stories to be sure the skill travels.

If you need spoken use, add a separate production phase; receptive success does not guarantee spoken use.