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)

Using classroom-based instruction and on-the-job monitoring and feedback, seven teachers were trained to systematically observe the data collection and teaching performances of their assistants as well as to provide contingent feedback. The supervisory training for teachers was accompanied by improvement in data collection among seven of eight…

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…

Three severely mentally retarded, multiply handicapped adolescents were treated in a classroom setting for social skill deficits. Treatment focused on increasing eye contact and strengthening on-task and in-seat behaviors. Results suggested that a combination of visual stimuli, operant, and social learning methods can be used to successfully…

This review of 20 years of literature on sight word instruction for individuals with handicaps examines effectiveness data for procedures teaching word recognition and comprehension. Covered are "errorless procedures," prompt elimination, stimulus fading, time delay, easy to hard discrimination, and trial and error with feedback. Two tables…

Comparison of two response prompting procedures--progressive time delay and system of least prompts--to teach three severely handicapped students (ages 8-16) identification of functional objects indicated that both procedures were effective but that the time delay procedure required fewer sessions, trials, errors to criterion, and minutes of…

The article describes new methodologies for teaching monetary skills to mentally retarded individuals. Procedures were designed to produce emergent new behavior through stimulus class formation, exclusion, and matching of stimulus components. Three case studies demonstrate the methods. (Author/DB)

The study assessed a program involving distinctive-feature prompts for teaching four educable mentally retarded children (ages 7-9) to use appropriate arithmetical operations with multicomponent pictorial problems. Results indicated the program was effective with all subjects. (Author/DB)

Four trainers taught communicative gestures to four individuals with severe mental retardation during one-to-one sessions. Preceding each training session, verbal feedback was given with regard to the trainer's performance during the previous session. Delayed feedback was found to result in increased accuracy of training. (Author/JDD)

This study examined whether sentence-combining exercises (with reinforcement) would increase the number of descriptive adjectives used in daily writing samples by three adolescents with autism. The sentence-combining exercises increased the number of adjectives used in the students' writing samples, and this increase was maintained in the absence…

Two studies compared the effectiveness of two procedures (multiple examples across trials and within trials) in teaching 10 students (ages 10-20) with moderate disabilities functional word discriminations. The first procedure was superior in acquisition; the latter procedure, however, was better under generalization for most participants.…

A study examined the use of a phonological awareness intervention program with three children with Down syndrome (ages 7-8). The intervention focused on key skills of alliteration detection, phoneme isolation, spelling of orthographically regular words, and rhyme detection. Results indicate participants improved the phonological awareness skills…

The study compared the effectiveness and efficiency of concurrent and isolation-intermix instruction in teaching four preschool children to read common words in their environment. Concurrent instruction resulted in students learning conditional discriminations in fewer trials and minutes of instructional time suggesting the value of teaching…

This review examined parenting education interventions in 20 published studies, involving 190 parents with intellectual disabilities. The most common instructional approach was behavioral. Initial training, follow-up, and social validity results were encouraging, whereas generalization and child outcomes data were weak. Research needs are noted.…

Evaluation of two methods, Stimulus Manipulation and Delay Feedback Only, for teaching four mildly handicapped students (ages 9-13) to solve missing minuend problems found both methods to be effective. However, systematic differences in error rate and long-term retention were observed, favoring the Stimulus Manipulation procedure. (Author/DB)