Increasing purposeful activity of severely and profoundly mentally-handicapped adults

A time-series reversal design was used to evaluate the effect of a ‘room manager’ procedure on the level of purposeful activity of severely and profoundly mentally-handicapped people in a residential home. The room manager procedure consisted of systematic prompts to participate in recreational activity and social reinforcement contingent on engagement. Data were collected on group and individual client behaviour and two measures of staff performance were taken to assess whether the procedure was implemented consistently across subjects and in line with the experimental design. The results showed that, as well as a group of subjects who engaged at a higher level during the room manager condition, there were consistently ‘high-engaging’ and ‘low-engaging’ groups, reflecting in part the general level of ability of the subjects. However, data on the independent variables show that the the contingency of staff contact did not vary across conditions and it cannot therefore be assumed that these subjects would not respond to the intervention. Some limitations of the procedure as used are discussed, and areas where further work is needed are indicated.