Imaging technologies such as positron emission tomography (PET) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) present unparalleled opportunities to investigate the neural basis of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). However, challenges such as deficits in social interaction, anxiety around new experiences, impaired language abilities, and hypersensitivity to…

To contribute to increasing the quality and quantity of communication between staff and adults with intellectual disabilities, training was undertaken to enhance the awareness and knowledge of signing as a method of communication. Multidisciplinary team members, residential and day centre staff were trained to use 20 core signs. Training methods…

Purpose: The effective use of visual cues to speech provides benefit for adults with normal hearing in noisy environments and for adults with hearing loss in everyday communication. The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of a computer-based, auditory-visual vowel identification training program on sentence recognition under difficult…

A reevaluation of a previous study which found a significant improvement in speechreading scores of 15 normal hearing adults following a word-scoring training intervention found that, though subjects increased verbal output and mean length of utterance, they did not improve sentence comprehension, syntactic correctness, or overall response…

The study found that simulation instruction on two representative teaching examples for each of two job task sequences resulted in concurrent generalized performance by four severely retarded adults. (Author/DB)

Self instruction and external instructional methods were compared with 19 mentally retarded adults. Results indicated that participants receiving verbal self-instructional training in the complex sequencing task achieved and sustained a higher level of performance than participants receiving external instruction. (Author/DB)

The study investigated relationships between type of prompt and type of task by teaching 32 mentally retarded adults two tasks (visual discrimination and a motoric assembly task) using two types of prompts (gestural and physical guidance). Results failed to support either the traditional response prompts hierarchy or the existence of a prompt-task…

Sixteen adult stutterers were randomly assigned to one of two groups: awareness training plus regulated-breathing or Azrin and Nunn's regulated-breathing method only. Awareness training significantly reduced stuttering compared to the control procedure. But the most significant improvement appeared after introduction of the regulated-breathing…

Results of withdrawing instructional components and trainers after a previous study using picture recipe cards to teach three mentally retarded adults to prepare meals indicated (from self reports and roommate reports) maintenance of trained skills during a 10-month period. (Author/DB)

The study assessed transfer of visual training for myopia using two different training stimuli and a single subject A-B-C-A design with a male student volunteer. A procedure including stimulus fading and reinforcement (positive verbal feedback) was used to effectively improve performance on both behavioral acuity tests during the training phases…

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)

The article compares the guide dog movements in the United States and England, noting that in England there is one school with 7 centers while in the U.S. there are 10 competing schools. In England, twice as high a proportion of blind people use guide dogs. (Author/DB)

A marital intervention method similar to conjoint counseling and requiring professional involvement with only one spouse in a marital dyad was investigated. Prior to the treatment, one spouse from each of 44 couples was trained in open, genuine self-disclosure and empathic understanding skills. After this training, 19 spouses trained their…

Two approaches to auditory training for improved speech recognition using 20 adults with mild to moderate sensorineural hearing impairments were compared. No significant differences were found between group one which spent training time on activities involving sentence perception and perceptual strategy and group two which focused on consonant…

The study compared two approaches to increasing engagement in a leisure activities program with six institutionalized retarded adult males. The "activities manager" approach was more effective in increasing levels of engagement than the "prompting independent use of activities" approach. There was little change, however, in resident vocalization,…