Young adults with intellectual and other developmental disabilities acquire vocational skills with video prompting

Students with intellectual and other developmental disabilities often require substantial support to acquire the skills needed to secure work experience and paid employment. Prior findings suggest that video prompting is likely to be an effective and feasible strategy for establishing such skills. To evaluate this possibility in a special education transition program, we examined the effectiveness of a video prompting procedure in teaching 8 young adults with developmental disabilities to perform job-related tasks (doing laundry, checking in to work, vacuuming, stripping bed). The intervention was effective with all participants. The skills maintained over 3 months, and the participants performed the tasks accurately in a new setting with different materials. Participants were reportedly satisfied with the intervention and deemed it easy to use.     

Discrimination of picture requests for missing items among young children with developmental disabilities

Two experiments were conducted to assess discrimination of picture requests for missing items among young children with developmental disabilities. In Experiment 1, three children were first taught to request one object when it was missing from a set of two related leisure items. In Experiment 2, two children were taught to request one object belonging to a set of three leisure items. In both studies the requesting response consisted of pointing to a photograph of the missing item. After acquisition of the initial request, discrimination of picture requests was assessed when the second item (Experiment 1) and second or third item (Experiment 2) was missing. Requests for the untrained items emerged in the presence of natural maintaining contingencies and in the absence of instructional prompts for all but the third child in Experiment 1. This child required continued intervention on the initial request. The results suggest that for some children a sequence of intervention and the programming of natural maintaining contingencies may prove effective in promoting the discrimination of picture requests for missing items among young children with developmental disabilities.     

The effects of self-monitoring on the procedural integrity of a behavioral intervention for young children with developmental disabilities

The effects of self-monitoring on the procedural integrity of token economy implementation by 3 staff in a special education classroom were evaluated. The subsequent changes in academic readiness behaviors of 2 students with low-incidence disabilities were measured. Multiple baselines across staff and students showed that procedural integrity increased when staff used monitoring checklists, and students' academic readiness behavior also increased. Results are discussed with respect to the use of self-monitoring and the importance of procedural integrity in public school settings.