AN ANALYSIS OF A GROUP TEACHING PROCEDURE FOR PERSONS WITH DEVELOPMENTAL DISABILITIES

This study evaluated whether a concurrent group teaching procedure, in which all students respond simultaneously, could be used for persons with moderate or severe mental retardation. The teaching procedure used was the Task Demonstration Model, a program based on stimulus-control research and the fading techniques of behavioral psychology. Three teachers and three groups of students participated. Results showed that the teachers increased their rates of questions and instructions, positive feedback, and use of functional materials, but they reduced their rate of prompts to almost zero. Students increased their percentage and rate of correct responding as well as their engaged time. In addition, maladaptive responding, for which there were never any direct consequences, decreased from 45% to 10% for 8 of the 14 students. Results are discussed primarily in two areas: (a) changing stimulus control from teacher prompts to critical elements of the items being taught, and (b) reasons for the reduction of maladaptive behavior for 8 of the subjects.     

Discrimination training of mirror-image stimuli with a delayed-prompt technique: some critical dimensions of extra-stimulus prompts

Research on fading and delay procedures has shown that extra-stimulus prompts frequently fail to help children learn difficult discriminations. The present study analyzed two delay conditions for an extra-stimulus prompt to help preschoolers discriminate mirror-image stimuli as a function of the configurations and locations of the prompts. All subjects were selected on their ability to discriminate the task stimuli in the presence of a third stimulus, a replica of the S+ and an arrow pointing to that stimulus; and on their inability to do so without these stimuli. Experiments 1 and 2 compared these prompt configurations (S+ replica, arrow) when presented equidistant from the task stimuli. Experiment 3 analyzed the contribution of the replica configuration in terms of its location, in between stimuli or immediately above the S+. Experiment 4 investigated the extent to which the results of the previous experiments could be influenced by the methodology for the assessment of prompt control. The results consistently demonstrated that most subjects did not learn the task unless the extra-stimulus prompt had the same configuration as the S+ and was located equidistant from both task stimuli.     

THE DIRECT AND GENERALIZED EFFECTS OF SELF INSTRUCTIONS AND PICTURE PROMPTS ON VOCATIONAL TASK PERFORMANCE

We evaluated the effects of self instructions and picture prompts on vocational task performance of three workers with mild to moderate mental retardation. The workers were asked to perform a packaging task that changed daily. Picture prompts were always present. In the verbal training phase, workers learned self instructions regarding the use of picture prompts to cue their performance on the packaging task. In the verbal and task training phase, workers learned to use the self instructions and picture prompts together to guide their task performance. The results showed that verbal training was sufficient for one worker, but that the other two workers required the combined verbal and task training to improve their task performance. For all subjects, there was evidence of generalization of the self management strategies and task performance and maintenance of both over time.     

Simultaneous Prompting and Instructive Feedback When Teaching Chained Tasks

This study evaluated the effectiveness of the simultaneous prompting procedure when teaching students with moderate to severe mental retardation a chained task (i.e., hand washing). This study also evaluated if students could acquire responses to instructive feedback stimuli presented during training sessions. The effectiveness of these procedures was assessed by using a multiple probe across students design. Acquisition, maintenance, and generalization data were collected and analyzed. Results indicated that the simultaneous prompting procedure was effective in teaching 3 of the 5 students to follow a 16-step task analysis to wash their hands. All students who met criterion maintained and generalized the skills with 100% accuracy. All students acquired some of the instructive feedback stimuli. Future research issues are discussed.     

Teaching boys with severe mental retardation to serve themselves during family-style meals

Three institutionalized adolescents with severe mental retardation were taught the socially valid skill of serving themselves during family-style meals. A nine-step task analysis was used as a guide for teaching the students, combined with verbal prompts, physical guidance, praise and correction. A multiple base-line design across three subjects was used to evaluate training. All three students successfully acquired the skill, which was seen as a step towards normalization and community placement.     

EFFECTS OF COMMUNITY-BASED,VIDEOTAPE, AND FLASH CARD INSTRUCTION OF COMMUNITY-REFERENCED SIGHT WORDS ON STUDENTS WITH MENTAL RETARDATION

Community-referenced sight words and phrases were taught to adolescents with mild and moderate mental retardation using three instructional methods in two locations. Words were presented on flash cards in a school setting, on videotape recordings in a school setting, and on naturally occurring signs in the community. During each session, participants were taught one third of the words in each of these conditions and were then tested at the community sites. A constant prompt delay procedure was used to promote stimulus control to the experimenter's cue initially and then to transfer control to the textual stimuli used for training. A multiple baseline across participants design was employed. Results showed rapid acquisition of the community-referenced sight words in all three training conditions and generalization from the flash card and videotape conditions to the community sites.     

A NOTE ON TRANSFER OF STIMULUS CONTROL IN THE DELAYED-CUE PROCEDURE: FACILITATION BY AN OVERT DIFFERENTIAL RESPONSE

This case study describes initially unsuccessful attempts to use the delayed-cue procedure to teach conditional discriminations to an individual with moderate mental retardation. The task was matching printed-word comparison stimuli to dictated-name sample stimuli. In three experiments, the subject typically waited for the delayed cue unless differential responses to the dictated samples (repeating the sample names) were required. Hence, the study provides an example of a way to make the delayed-cue method more effective. The stimulus control bases for the results are discussed.     

Verbal and visual instruction with mental retardation: The role of subject characteristics and task factors

Past research and theory presents an inconsistent picture concerning the relative value of verbal versus visual instructional programs for individuals with mental retardation. From an empirical perspective, there is evidence that this inconsistency may be due to the differences in the type of tasks and the specific abilities of the subjects employed across studies. In this research, the effects of three instructional procedures (verbal, visual, and verbal plus visual) were evaluated with mentally retarded persons who varied in verbal and visual ability. Performance was examined on a visual task which incorporated stimuli of varying degrees of familiarity to the subjects. The results indicated that the use of the combined verbal-visual instruction procedure was more effective than the other two training programs when task stimuli were familiar to the subjects. When task stimuli were unfamiliar, instructional procedures which had a visual component were found to be superior to a procedure which employed only the use of verbal component. The subjects' visual ability was most strongly associated with performance outcome when visual instruction was employed and unfamiliar task stimuli were sorted. In contrast, subjects' verbal ability appeared to be equally important across instructional and task conditions. The implications of the results for the design of instructional programs and for future research are discussed.     

Teaching chained skills in a non-school setting using a divided half instructional format

This investigation evaluated the use of dyadic instructional arrangements in teaching chained skills to four students with moderate mental retardation. Each instructional dyad consisted of two students. Each of the three cooking skills was divided into two equal parts, and each student in a dyad received direct instruction on one part of the task analysis during each instructional session. During the following session, the two parts were reversed and a student received instruction on the second part. A constant time delay procedure was used to teach the targeted skills in an off-campus setting. A multiple probe design across skills and replicated across students evaluated the effectiveness of the instructional procedure and teaching arrangement. Results indicate that each of the four students learned the three cooking skills. Implications for future research are discussed.     

Establishing mirror-image discriminations with progressively delayed extra-stimulus prompts.

Progressively delayed extra-stimulus prompts were used to help normal preschool children discriminate left-right mirror-image stimuli. Two issues were addressed, the attention guiding properties of the prompts and the necessity for their gradual elimination. The study consisted of four experiments in which one or multiple prompt conditions were used. Each condition involved three prompts: a reference prompt for indicating the S+ and two superimposed prompts, one on the S+, and one on the S-. The prompts required subjects to respond to the orientation of the S+ (Orientation condition) or to the location of the reference prompt (Location condition); or allowed them to respond to the discriminative shapes of the superimposed prompts (Shape condition). The results showed the following. First, most subjects rapidly learned to respond to the Orientation prompts. Second, delayed orientation prompting was always successful regardless of how the prompts were eliminated. Delay training was never successful in either of the other two conditions. Third, the Orientation condition did not reliably produce learning unless the delayed prompting procedure was used.     

The blocking effect of pictorial prompts on sight-word reading

This study replicates and extends previous work showing that pictorial prompts can interfere with the learning of sight words by students with moderate mental retardation. Effects of training with 6 students were assessed during five conditions using an alternating treatments design. In four conditions, words were presented either alone or with a corresponding picture. In a fifth condition, pictures were used to provide feedback. The results showed that acquisition was achieved fastest during the word-alone conditions with 5 students.     

Instructive feedback: Effects of number and type

We evaluated the effects of presenting two instructive feedback stimuli of the same and different types for each target behavior taught. Four elementary school students with mild mental retardation were taught to name photographs of places of interest in the local community using constant time delay and instructive feedback. Initially, the four students were taught one set of photographs with one instructive feedback stimulus (name of the street on which the place was located) for each target photograph. All students learned to name all photographs, and three learned to name the street on which the place was located. The three students who learned to name the street for the place in the photograph were then taught three sets of photographs. Each set included two instructive feedback stimuli for each target photograph: Set 2 had one street name and one activity that occurred in the place; Set 3 had two activities per photograph, and Set 4 had one street name and one activity. The three students learned to name the photographs, but only learned to name the activities and not the street names that were presented through instructive feedback. These finds are discussed in terms of the factors that may control acquisition of instructive feedback stimuli and the implications for practice and future research.     

Use of a self-regulated strategy intervention to improve word problem-solving skills of students with mild disabilities

We investigated the effects of self-regulated strategy instruction on the ability of four elementary-school students with mild handicaps (2 with learning disabilities [LD] and 2 with mild mental retardation [MMR]) to perform 4 types of addition and subtraction word problems. We used a multiple baseline design and a self-instructional strategy to address story problem solving. Results indicated that the strategy was effective in increasing the number of correctly solved word problems. Gains were maintained across a 6 and 8 week follow-up check. The study supports previous research indicating that cognitive strategies are effective for students with LD and suggests that cognitive strategies are appropriate for students with MMR.     

Cognitive operations associated with individual differences in affect intensity

There are wide individual differences in the characteristic intensity of affective response to the same emotion-evoking event. The processes whereby individuals come to experience strong or mild emotional responses when exposed to the same affect-provoking stimuli are still unclear. In these studies, we propose that individual differences in affect intensity are associated with certain cognitive operations used during exposure to emotion-relevant stimuli. Specifically, cognitive operations that involve personalizing, generalizing, and selective abstraction were hypothesized to discriminate subjects high and low in affect intensity. Two studies replicated support for the hypothesis that subjects high on the affect-intensity dimension engage in more personalizing/empathic and more generalizing/elaborative cognitive operations than do subjects low on the affect-intensity dimension. The same cognitive operations discriminated groups high and low in affect intensity in response to both positive and negative emotional stimuli. Also, the cognitions that discriminated subjects high and low in affect intensity occurred only in response to affective stimuli; neutral stimuli did not evoke divergent cognitive operations for these two groups. Finally, a high degree of consistency was found in the use of emotion-relevant cognitive operations across positive and negative affective stimuli.     

Perception of temporally competing speech stimuli in preschool children

The aim of this study was to investigate the perception of competing speech stimuli in 3-, 4-, and 5-year-old normally developing children. A dichotic listening paradigm was used in which the temporal alignment between the two stimuli was varied to represent three levels of competition. Minimal, moderate, and maximal levels of temporal competition were represented by a Separation, Lag, and Simultaneous test condition, respectively. The subjects were behaviorally set to listen for and to report the two stimuli on each trial. The incidence of double correct responses in the test conditions was the measure of interest. The results show a sharp and linear drop in double correct scores from the Separation, to the Lag, and to the Simultaneous condition. There were no age-related differences in the Separation and the Simultaneous conditions. In the Lag condition, the performance of the 3-year-olds was significantly lower than the 4- and 5-year-olds. The findings were interpreted to be indicative of limited auditory processing ability in preschoolers for moderately and maximally competing speech stimuli.     

轻度智力落后学生心理健康问题的研究

本研究使用心理健康诊断测验(MHT)手册对10-16岁(四至九年级)的轻度智力落后学生与智力正常学生间的心理健康水平进行比较研究,结果发现：轻度智力落后学生有不同程度的心理健康问题,随班就读轻度智力落后学生的心理健康问题尤为突出．有待相应有效的教育支持。     

Training class inclusion responding in typically developing children and individuals with autism

In a class inclusion task, a child must respond to stimuli as being involved in two different though hierarchically related categories. This study used a Relational Frame Theory (RFT) paradigm to assess and train this ability in three typically developing preschoolers and three individuals with autism spectrum disorder, all of whom had failed class inclusion tests. For all subjects, relational training successfully established the target repertoire and subsequent testing demonstrated both maintenance and generalization. Limitations and future research directions are discussed.     

Teaching Different Tasks Using Different Stimuli in a Heterogeneous Small Group

The effectiveness of a simultaneous prompting procedure was evaluated in a heterogeneous small group using different tasks and different stimuli for each student. Participants included four middle school students whose functioning levels ranged from typically developing to moderate and severe disabilities. A multiple probe design across behaviors and replicated across students was used. Observational learning maintenance, and generalization also were assessed. Results indicate that the procedure was successful in teaching all four students their targeted stimuli as well as some of the non-targeted stimuli (i.e., observational learning). Students maintained and generalized their information with a high degree of accuracy. Limitations of the study and future research implications are discussed.     

Effects of reinforced directed rehearsal on expressive sign language learning by persons with mental retardation

This study used a multielement design to compare standard training (prompting and reinforcement) with and without reinforced directed rehearsal as a correction procedure in teaching expressive sign language to 10 nonverbal students with moderate to severe mental retardation. Standard training consisted of either sequential prompting or graduated guidance and 5 students were randomly assigned to each condition. Directed rehearsal involved 10 practices of the correct sign contingent on an error or no response; praise was given during directed rehearsal for cooperation and attempted signing. A stimulus control analysis revealed that only 6 of the 10 students (3 from each standard training condition) completely discriminated the trained signs within the maximum training period of 160 trials (3 of the 4 students who failed the stimulus control test were hearing impaired; the remaining 6 who showed stimulus control were not). Using only these six students' data, we found that directed rehearsal increased: (a) accuracy (percent correct), (b) speed of learning (required fewer trials to criterion), (c) efficiency (decreased total instruction time), and (d) generalization (across trainers, objects, and settings). There were no obvious interactions between directed rehearsal and the type of prompting strategy employed. Very little agitated behavior occurred in any of the sessions, and a treatment acceptability survey indicated that 10 of 14 direct-care staff and the trainers in this study preferred corrective directed rehearsal (as used in this study) over standard training alone. The results indicate that directed rehearsal may be a valuable adjunct to sign language training with nonverbal students with mental retardation.     

Effects of self-monitoring and subsequent fading of external prompts on the on-task behavior and task productivity of elementary students with moderate mental retardation

This study investigated the effectiveness of self-monitoring on the on-task behavior and vocational production rates of 5 elementary students with moderate mental retardation during biweekly pre-vocational workshop sessions. They were taught to use a recording form to monitor their behavior and were cued to monitor by audiotaped tones. A multiple-baseline design across tasks was used to demonstrate a functional relationship between self-monitoring and both on-task behavior and task productivity. Once this relationship was demonstrated, the monitoring form and audiotape were withdrawn through fading procedures. Results indicated that (a) self-monitoring increased both on-task behavior and vocational task production rates, (b) performance gains maintained while cues and monitoring forms were withdrawn, and (c) gains maintained over several weeks in the absence of prompts (i.e., forms and tones).