In educational research, there is the general trade-off that empirical evidence should be generalizable to be applicable across contexts; at the same time, empirical evidence should be as specific as possible to be localizable in subject-specific educational interventions to successfully transfer the empirical evidence to educational practice.…

A functional program including planning, shopping, purchasing, and meal preparation was developed which used a photographic format (to minimize reading) and budget guide. Trial with eight young adults whose disabilities ranged from mild to severe indicated that nonreading individuals could learn all aspects of meal preparation. Skills also…

This study addressed the problem of promoting generalization of knowledge in people with mental handicaps, by presenting an approach based on the idea that certain cognitive representations of strategies and related concepts are common to solving a wide variety of problems. The surface context of these problems may vary considerably, but all will…

The final report describes activities of the Improving Community-Based Instruction Project, which conducted research to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of training in community settings with individuals with severe disabilities. Three areas of research were undertaken: (1) studies of the influence of the location of instruction on the…

Multimedia instruction was used to teach three secondary students with mild to moderate intellectual disabilities to locate grocery items by reading words on aisle signs. Results indicate that the multimedia program was effective in teaching generalized reading of the associated word pairs and location of the grocery items in the store. (Contains…

An instructional procedure to teach laundry skills to four high school students with moderate mental disabilities utilized least prompts with multiple exemplars of materials to facilitate generalization of skills across community settings and multiple exemplars of nontargeted information presented as instructive feedback. Students acquired and…

Individualized trans-situational interventions (TSIs) were implemented with three middle-school students at risk for school failure. Problem behaviors in school were reduced and linked to problem behavior reduction in the home when concurrent behavior support was established in the home and at school. (Contains references.) (Author/CR)

This final report describes activities of a federally funded project which developed an educational computer-assisted instructional program for persons with severe disabilities. A preliminary review of the literature identified specific inadequacies of most software for this population, such as: too few examples of a task or concept thus limiting…

This document presents the final report of a 4-year project (ending in 1991) which conducted six studies of the impact of various peer-mediated interventions on the acquisition, generalization, and maintenance of social interaction skills of preschoolers with severe disabilities. The report covers project objectives, the project's theoretical…

The paper describes a North Carolina program which teaches new behavior as a curriculum area to students with emotional handicaps. New behaviors require instructional approaches similar to academic areas including instructional levels of awareness, understanding, and application. The first step in behavior instruction is targeting behavioral…