Cognitive modifiability of children with developmental disabilities: a multicentre study using Feuerstein's Instrumental Enrichment--Basic program.
Feuerstein’s IE-basic lessons delivered by engaged staff can lift cognitive test scores for young children with developmental disabilities.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Jones et al. (2010) ran a quasi-experiment in several special-education centers. They gave one group of children with autism, ID, ADHD, or other delays the Feuerstein IE-basic lessons. A second group kept their usual lessons. Both groups took the same cognitive tests before and after.
IE-basic is a set of paper-and-pencil thinking tasks. Teachers act as mediators: they ask questions, link ideas to the child’s world, and praise effort. Kids received 27 to 90 hours of lessons across one school year.
What they found
Children who got IE-basic scored higher on standardized cognitive tests than the active-control children. The gain was medium in size. The biggest jumps happened in classrooms where every teacher embraced the mediated-learning style.
When staff used the IE language during daily routines, kids kept the new skills longer.
How this fits with other research
Adams et al. (2021) extends the idea into quick movement breaks. Five-minute active pauses raised working-memory scores slightly for older kids with ID. IE-basic shows longer, teacher-led cognitive lessons can give bigger gains for younger children.
Verberg et al. (2022) took the concept online. Their Growth Factory mindset program improved mental health and perseverance in teens with ID. Both studies agree: structured thinking practice helps, and student buy-in matters.
Katz et al. (2020) used a universal mental-health curriculum and saw large gains in self-concept and coping. IE-basic focused on raw cognition; Jennifer’s program targeted social-emotional skills. Together they suggest you can boost both IQ-type skills and self skills in the same schools.
Why it matters
If you serve 5- to 8-year-olds with developmental delays, IE-basic offers a ready-made lesson bank. Schedule three short sessions per week. Coach all staff to mediate: ask “How did you figure that out?” and tie tasks to real life. Track progress with any standardized cognitive test. The study says the payoff appears when the whole team—not just the lead teacher—uses the method.
Get CEUs on This Topic — Free
The ABA Clubhouse has 60+ on-demand CEUs including ethics, supervision, and clinical topics like this one. Plus a new live CEU every Wednesday.
Pick one IE-basic task, model mediated-learning language for staff, and run a 15-minute small-group trial while taking turns asking “What’s your plan?” after each problem.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
The study aimed at exploring the effectiveness of cognitive intervention with the new "Instrumental Enrichment Basic" program (IE-basic), based on Feuerstein's theory of structural cognitive modifiability that contends that a child's cognitive functioning can be significantly modified through mediated learning intervention. The IE-basic progam is aimed at enhancing domain-general cognitive functioning in a number of areas (systematic perception, self-regulation abilities, conceptual vocabulary, planning, decoding emotions and social relations) as well as transferring learnt principles to daily life domains. Participants were children with DCD, CP, intellectual impairment of genetic origin, autistic spectrum disorder, ADHD or other learning disorders, with a mental age of 5-7 years, from Canada, Chile, Belgium, Italy and Israel. Children in the experimental groups (N=104) received 27-90 h of the program during 30-45 weeks; the comparison groups (N=72) received general occupational and sensory-motor therapy. Analysis of the pre- to post-test gain scores demonstrated significant (p<0.05) advantage of experimental over comparison groups in three WISC-R subtests ("Similarities", "Picture Completion", "Picture Arrangement") and Raven Coloured Matrices. Effect sizes ranged from 0.3 to 0.52. Results suggest that it is possible to improve cognitive functioning of children with developmental disability. No advantage was found for children with specific aetiology. Greater cognitive gains were demonstrated by children who received the program in an educational context where all teachers were committed to the principles of mediated learning.
Research in developmental disabilities, 2010 · doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2009.12.001