This article presents a rationale for the importance of relationships as a focus for training infant/family professionals and paraprofessionals. It describes six innovative training strategies that have been used as part of the ZERO TO THREE/National Center for Clinical Infant Programs' City TOTS (training of trainers) project. (Author/DB)

Treatment of a woman with severe mental retardation with the Self-Injurious Behavior Inhibiting System (SIBIS) resulted in significant reductions in SIB behavior which generalized to the natural environment and the brief follow-up sessions. (Author/DB)

Describes how a management information system (MIS) at NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) was adapted to ensure adequate training to accompany the development of computer applications. Highlights include semantic differences; user needs; time and budget constraints; and problems between users and programmers, including examples.…

Two children (ages four and five) with mild developmental delays and no appropriate toy play were trained individually on one topography for each toy. Previously reinforced topographies of toy play were then placed on extinction, resulting in the induction of untrained topographies. (Author/DB)

Two children (ages four and five) with word-finding deficits characterized largely by semantic substitutions participated in a treatment involving phonological information about target words. Treatment resulted in reduction not only of occasional phonological word-finding substitutions but also of the large number of semantic word-finding…

Discusses the evaluation of workshops and conferences and presents an application of Kirkpatrick's four-stage evaluation model, an accepted model for measuring performance and instructional interventions. Highlights include presurveys and postsurveys; participant reaction forms during the meetings; and assessing previous participants. (10…

Presents the transcript of an interview with Roger Schank that focused on the use of goal-based scenarios (GBS) for business training. Highlights include traditional approaches to business training and education; human memory models; advantages of GBS; and the value of computers in a GBS learning environment. (eight references) (LRW)

The effectiveness of a cognitive-process approach for teaching appropriate responses to criticism were assessed across three young adults with moderate mental retardation who were receiving vocational training. Results indicated that two participants learned this approach and successfully generalized their behavior across untrained stimuli.…

Reports on a seminar sponsored by the European Community that presented descriptions of projects involving the use of telecommunications for training and instruction via distance education. Topics discussed include the use of satellites, their cost effectiveness, computer-mediated communication (CMC), and further directions for the Commission of…

This study of four moderately to severely aphasic subjects found that success in manual sign training programs is related to severity of aphasia, that aphasic subjects' propositional use of manual signs rarely follows simple acquisition, and that generalization to untrained stimuli or environments does not occur without additional training.…

This study, involving four severely handicapped adults in a community residence, compared two interventions for improving quality of household cleaning. A graduated prompting system showed moderate improvements in three subjects, whereas a self-management package (including sequential picture cues, self-monitoring, feedback, and public posting of…

Sustainable development means educating the powerless to become empowered. The changed role of development workers requires participatory training that gives them the experience of nonhierarchical collective learning and decision making. (SK)

Describes a game called UPSIDE DOWN that is designed for use in higher education courses or in corporate training to sensitize participants to cultural issues when interacting with groups with different backgrounds. Both intragroup and intergroup interactions are described, suggestions for debriefing are given, and a complete set of rules is…

This article reviews the theoretical and research literature on vision stimulation and vision training of children with severe irreversible visual impairments. It recommends early stimulation to prevent visual deprivation, use of operant conditioning, and the presentation of highly contrasting stimuli to stimulate visual awareness in children with…

An educational program for five parents with mild mental retardation found that knowledge training produced sizable increases in the knowledge measure, but neither it nor the behavioral training produced increases in parenting skills. However, following training in the home, each of the parenting skills increased substantially. (Author/JDD)