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)

Four students (ages 10-14) with moderate mental retardation learned chained tasks with constant time delay and with the system of least prompts. Both strategies produced criterion-level performance; however, constant time delay was more efficient than least prompts in terms of number of sessions, percent of errors, and direct instructional time to…

Two time-delay conditions for teaching complex visual discriminations to 14 normal preschoolers, 12 with mild mental retardation, and 11 with moderate mental retardation were compared. Results indicated that for all populations and stimuli, time delay of multiple dynamic distinctive-feature prompts produced learning, while time delay of the single…

This study compared use of trainer demonstrations and use of visual cues across varying difficulties of task, by 20 mentally retarded secondary-aged students. Results found that photographs and line drawings were more effective with mildly/moderately retarded students than demonstrations when working with complex tasks. No differences were found…

Utilizing four pairs of preschoolers with Down's Syndrome, the efficacy of two prompt-fading procedures (decreasing assistance and graduated guidance procedure) was compared during instruction of two self-help skills. The efficacy of observational learning was also examined. Both prompt-fading procedures and observational learning were effective…

This study of 40 junior high school students with learning disabilities and 20 control students found that significant intergroup differences in the quality of narrative compositions were not evident when students were allocated time for planning and were given "Create a Story" cues. (Author/JDD)

Strategies to develop creativity were given to high school teachers in a graduate course, Developing Creativity in Teaching. Higher degrees of creativity emerged when the groups used the instructor's clues to write a story and when group brainstorming and writing, as opposed to individual writing, were done. (Author/SJL)