Children with disabilities play less often and demonstrate fewer varied pretend play behaviors than children with typical development. A multiple-probe design was used to examine the relation between teachers' use of the system of least prompts and contingent imitation and the acquisition, maintenance, and generalization of pretend play and…

Many studies have shown that small-group direct instruction is effective and efficient for teaching students with and without disabilities, although relatively few studies have been conducted with heterogeneous groups of preschool participants. In addition, previous studies have primarily assessed whether observational learning occurred for…

Research was reviewed on small-group instruction for learners with disabilities. The review was conducted for articles published between 1990 and 2010 on the application of small-group direct instruction to teach discrete skills using prompting procedures. A total of 47 articles with 197 participants and 687 replications of effects was located.…

The study aimed to compare the differential effectiveness of explicit and implicit instruction of two Dutch spelling rules. Students with and without spelling disabilities were instructed a spelling rule either implicitly or explicitly in two experiments. Effects were tested in a pretest-intervention-posttest control group design. Experiment 1…

The purpose of this study was to determine if an intervention consisting of contingently imitating play, modeling expansions of play actions, and describing play actions increased the diversity of object play in young children with disabilities. The multicomponent intervention was introduced in a multiple-probe design across three young children…

The purpose of this study was to analyze literature regarding interventions for promoting pretend play in children with disabilities. Sixteen studies were found using experimental designs to evaluate pretend play interventions with children with disabilities. The results were analyzed across the targeted pretense behaviors, participants,…

A constant-time-delay procedure was used to teach a generalized response to the lures of strangers to four preschool children with disabilities. Only after also providing in vivo training did instruction result in acquisition, maintenance, and generalization of the response with novel lures, strangers, and sites. (Author/DB)

Explores the use of video-based multimedia simulations for teaching functional skills to persons with developmental disabilities and discusses future considerations, design issues, and implications. Considerations address the importance of appropriate role modeling and the combination of video-based simulation and in vivo training to foster…

The study evaluated effects of a data collection inservice package on the frequency of collecting student progress data by four staff members in an integrated preschool program. Individualized instruction and feedback produced consistent increases in the amount of data collection, but minimal generalization to non-targeted children and maintenance…

This article discusses the phenomenon of skill generalization and techniques for bringing it about. Strategies for generalization facilitation across several dimensions are defined and examples given, with an emphasis on developing and validating decision roles. Further discussion is given to means of facilitating generalization in design and use…

This article discusses probable explanations for the weak effects in some meta-analyses that have investigated the effectiveness of social skills training (SST) for students with disabilities and offers specific recommendations for designing and producing more effective SST interventions. Treatment integrity issues, assessment issues, and…

This study of four preschool children (two typically developing, one physically disabled, one mildly developmentally delayed) found that use of a simultaneous prompting procedure was effective in teaching expressive word recognition to three of the students. Maintenance and generalization were also successful. (Author/JDD)

This article discusses knowledge gaps that exist in the instruction of preschoolers with disabilities, in terms of the curriculum content, procedures used to individualize instruction, instructional procedures designed to ensure acquisition, and strategies used to ensure skill use or generalization. Barriers to generating such knowledge and…

Analyzes the generalization failures of social-skills instruction, outlines some critical differences between instruction in social- and academic-skills areas, and suggests the depth of analysis, instruction, and facilitation that will be required to achieve generalization of social skills. The modification of environments to support behavior is…

This article presents the goals, philosophy, and theory of the Direct Instruction model. The theory stresses the learning of generalizations with multiple examples through a highly structured curriculum. Connections between theory and practice are illustrated with a variety of examples of thinking operations from Direct Instruction programs.…