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)

In order to meet the needs of researchers whose primary interest is in methods for training the retarded in domestic, vocational, or other nonacademic skills, a procedure is described for estimating equivalent difficulty for different vocational preparation tasks. (Author/DB)

A teaching approach which used general case procedures for selecting teaching examples was effective in teaching four severely retarded high school students basic telephone skills. Trained skills generalized to nontrained telephone situations and telephone use was continued (at 18 months after training) as a part of each student's lifestyle.…

In a study which taught four high school students with severe handicaps to use a commercial washing machine and laundry soap dispenser, a concurrent chaining strategy was found more efficient than forward chaining in facilitating skill acquisition. Concurrent chaining also resulted in better maintenance at four- and eight-week follow-up…

Twenty individuals with mild retardation and 20 individuals with moderate retardation participated in simulated instruction and/or community training of four functional living tasks. Participants with mild retardation performed better on simulated tasks and in the community settings, however, in many situations, community training was sufficiently…

Two experiments in training residents with severe disabilities in key use revealed increased ability to locate keys when reinforced for doing so and successful key use by 20 of 25 participants to open and lock their personal lockers. However, only 36 percent of participants were able to use their keys without prompts. (Author/DB)

The effectiveness and efficiency of stimulus fading, stimulus shaping, time delay, and a feedback only procedure were compared in teaching three adults with moderate developmental delays sight words. Results showed no clear advantage for any one procedure. The benefit of conducting a preliminary evaluation of instructional procedures during…

Verbal prompts, modeling, physical guidance, positive reinforcement, fading, and chaining procedures were used to teach two nonverbal individuals (one severely and one moderately mentally retarded) an interactive signing dialogue in a naturalistic setting. Although clients learned to use signed communication, extensive training was required and…