Three blind adults were trained in a 7-step structured procedure for asking questions to solicit information concerning the location of businesses they wished to visit. Completeness of information obtained increased dramatically with the use of this procedure. (Author/DB)

Drawing as therapy for the expressively restricted aphasic adult is discussed with sections on: drawing and acquired brain damage, communication through drawing in aphasia, and training expressively restricted aphasic patients to draw communicatively by use of the Lyon/Sims Program. (DB)

The study with three blind and mentally retarded adults with additional disabilities found that general case simulation instruction in housekeeping skills led to generalization to untrained settings. Degree of generalization was inversely related to the severity and complexity of participant disability. (Author/DB)

Four methods for response prompting and fading are reviewed: increasing assistance, decreasing assistance, graduated guidance, and time delay. Comparative investigations involving these methods are discussed, and recommendations for practitioners and for future research are included. (Author/JDD)

The paper presents a seven-step model that job coaches may use to teach self-management to employees with severe disabilities in supported employment settings. Steps include: identifying the problem, establishing a range of acceptable behavior, selecting self-management procedures, training self-management skills by withdrawing external…

This paper evaluates a program for assessing and/or training choice-making skills as a means of providing opportunities for adults with profound mental retardation to express food and drink preferences. In Experiment 1, the assessment/training procedure involving repeated, paired-item presentations, resulted in active choice-making and the…

The study's results showed that the self-instruction procedure used by four severely retarded adults led to improved vocational skills as indicated by increased work production rates and a concomitant decrease in the number of errors. (Author/DB)

This study of four moderately to severely aphasic subjects found that success in manual sign training programs is related to severity of aphasia, that aphasic subjects' propositional use of manual signs rarely follows simple acquisition, and that generalization to untrained stimuli or environments does not occur without additional training.…

This study, involving four severely handicapped adults in a community residence, compared two interventions for improving quality of household cleaning. A graduated prompting system showed moderate improvements in three subjects, whereas a self-management package (including sequential picture cues, self-monitoring, feedback, and public posting of…

The performance of four direct service providers in feeding, positioning, and transferring physically disabled patients was measured. Use of written instructions led to slight and usually brief changes in performance. The introduction of feedback, especially a continuous schedule, resulted in marked improvements which were maintained. (Author/JDD)

Four types of adaptations facilitate the age appropriate acquisition of recreational skills in severely handicapped persons: material, procedural/rule, skill sequence, and facility adaptations. A case study illustrates systematic instruction, programmatic adaptations, and materials modification, to teach a photography skill to a multiply…

Ten adults with mild mental retardation used color-coded food photographs and meal code cards to plan nutritionally balanced meals. Subjects spent an average of nine minutes to plan three meals. Errors, which were primarily omissions, occurred mostly in food groups requiring four servings daily. (JDD)

Three mentally handicapped students (aged 13, 36, and 40) with maladaptive speech received training to answer questions with verbal labels. The results of their cues-pause-point training showed that the students replaced their maladaptive speech with correct labels (answers) to questions in the training setting and three generalization settings.…

Five adults with developmental disabilities were trained on six interactional skill areas using the "Sorry" game format. The study involved natural environment training, role playing, and modeling of correct responses only as an error correction procedure during training. All participants increased their use of trained behaviors during…

The study found significant improvements in behavior when a profoundly mentally retarded blind subject was reinforced with music. The young woman also discriminated among different types of music, and behavior rates varied accordingly. (Author/DB)