Teaching mending skills to mentally retarded adolescents

Community-Referenced Instruction: Research and Issues

This review addresses some of the more crucial teaching and learning issues that arise when community-referenced instruction is applied to persons with severe disabilities. These issues include environmental assessment, task analysis, trial sequencing, control, empirical and social validity, and measurement. A stimulus set of standards that emerged from the literature reviewed was presented to guide and evaluate future community-referenced research.

System of Least Prompts: A Literature Review of Procedural Parameters

This manuscript describes an instructional strategy, system of least prompts, and reviews the use of the procedure in the applied research literature. The literature is analyzed in terms of the populations for which the procedure has been used, the type of skills that have been taught with the procedure, and the results when the procedure was employed. The literature also is described in terms of previously identified parameters of the system of least prompts including (a) the number and type of prompts included in the least-to-most assistance prompt hierarchies, (b) the presentation of the target stimulus at each prompt level, (c) use of a fixed response interval, and (d) the delivery of reinforcement following correct prompted and unprompted responses. Summary statements and recommendations about future use and research are included.

A Comparison of Most-to-Least and Least-to-Most Prompting on the Acquisition of Solitary Play Skills

Two studies are presented in which common prompting procedures were evaluated while teaching children with autism to build Lego(®) play structures. In the first study, most-to-least (MTL) and least-to-most (LTM) prompting were compared. All participants learned to build the play structures when the teacher used MTL, which was associated with fewer errors than LTM. Nonetheless, three participants learned more quickly with LTM. This finding suggests that MTL may prevent errors, but it sometimes slows learning. The second study compared LTM to MTL without and with a delay (MTLD). MTLD provided an opportunity for the child to independently initiate responding but still minimized the likelihood of errors. Results showed that acquisition was nearly as rapid when the teacher used MTLD as LTM but it produced fewer errors than LTM. Best practice guidelines for choosing prompting procedures are proposed.

Reducing disruptive behaviors by training students to request assistance

Disruptive behaviors of students with disabilities can have a communicative function. They may aid the learner in escaping from aversive situations, and they may also serve to produce positive events. Disruptive behaviors that have a communicative function may be eliminated by teaching an alternative prosocial response. This study compared the relative effectiveness of two teaching methods for reducing disruptive behaviors exhibited by two primary age students with moderate disabilities. The first method consisted solely of a hierarchy of prompts. The second method combined the prompting hierarchy with a cue to request assistance. A multiple baseline design across students with alternating treatments was used to evaluate performance. Results demonstrated a clear relationship between teaching participants to request assistance and a reduction in disruptive behaviors.

An evaluation of gentle teaching and visual screening in the reduction of stereotypy

Gentle teaching and visual screening techniques have been used to control severe behavior problems in persons with mental retardation. An alternating treatments design was used to compare gentle teaching, visual screening, and a task-training condition in the reduction of the high-level stereotypy of 3 persons with mental retardation. Following a baseline phase, a task-training condition using standard behavioral techniques was implemented to establish the effects of training the subjects on the tasks. Results showed a modest decrease in stereotypy. This phase was followed by an alternating treatments phase in which visual screening, gentle teaching, and baseline conditions were compared. Both procedures were superior to the control condition in reducing stereotypic behavior, with visual screening being more effective than gentle teaching. When compared with data from the prior phase, gentle teaching was found to be more effective than task training for 2 subjects but less effective for the 3rd, whose stereotypy increased during gentle teaching. Two succeeding phases in which visual screening was implemented across two and then all three daily conditions reduced stereotypy further to near-zero levels. An additional phase with 1 subject demonstrated that the treatment effects of visual screening were easily replicated across therapists. Mixed and idiosyncratic changes in collateral behaviors occurred. For example, "bonding," the goal of gentle teaching, occurred at the same low levels under both treatments, contrary to the predictions of gentle teaching's proponents. The results indicate that gentle teaching may not be the universal treatment of choice for stereotypy its proponents suggest, and that it requires further empirical evaluation.

Analysis of demand conditions associated with stereotypy

Possible escape/avoidance functions of stereotypic behavior were investigated in a classroom setting using functional academic tasks. A 6-year-old boy's stereotypic mouthing was assessed during high vs low response activities, familiar vs novel activities and avoidance vs partial-avoidance conditions. Results showed that stereotypy occurred at higher rates during more difficult activities (i.e. those that were novel or required a greater number of responses), and when stereotypy was allowed to effect a delay in instructional demands. Treatment procedures based on these analyses were implemented by the classroom teacher and shown to be effective.

Teaching life skills to adults disabled by autism

The acquisition of life skills is a high priority for adults disabled by autism who are living in community-based residential programs. A training program was implemented and evaluated that consisted of analyzing life skills into component steps and providing increasing levels of assistance according to a predetermined schedule. Five adults who were severely disabled by autism and who lived in group homes in the community served as participants. All five adults showed progress in targeted life skills, and four of the five achieved independence on their targeted skills. The usefulness of this training model in community-based residential programs is discussed.

Teaching menstrual care to mentally retarded women: acquisition, generalization, and maintenance

We evaluated a training package designed to teach menstrual care skills to five mild to severely mentally retarded women. Three specific skill areas (changing stained underwear; sanitary napkin; and both stained underwear and sanitary napkin) were task analyzed and taught in a sequential manner. Results of a multiple-baseline design across women indicated that the training package was successful in teaching these skills; the women continued to perform the skills during naturally occurring menses up to 5 months following termination of the study.