Explores the applied research in which object-related play skills of preschool children with developmental concerns are enhanced through intervention strategies. Guidelines for teaching toy play skills are offered as are strategies to promote generalization and maintenance of those skills. (DB)

A review of 48 studies on the use of sight-word methodology to teach functional reading to individuals with moderate and severe disabilities found that sight-word instruction has been highly effective with this population. New strategies have included feedback procedures and applying constant time delay. A persistent limitation of the research is…

Three young adults with moderate to severe mental retardation were taught conversation skills using task analysis and cognitive strategies training procedures. Results show that the participants generalized the conversation skills learned under the cognitive strategies condition and that the cognitive strategies training allowed more normalized…

Appropriate safe responses to products containing key words on warning labels were taught to four elementary students with moderate mental retardation using a constant time delay procedure. Results found the procedure effective in teaching safe responses, as well as in increasing a generalized response to novel settings and materials. (Author/PB)

This study compared active student response (ASR) error correction and no-response (NR) error correction while teaching science terms to five elementary students. When a student erred, the teacher modeled the definition and the student either repeated it (ASR) or not (NR). ASR error correction was superior on each of seven dependent variables.…

An instructional procedure to teach laundry skills to four high school students with moderate mental disabilities utilized least prompts with multiple exemplars of materials to facilitate generalization of skills across community settings and multiple exemplars of nontargeted information presented as instructive feedback. Students acquired and…

This study examined the relationship between the self-ratings of 97 students and their teachers' ratings of four sets of generalizable skills: mathematics, communication, interpersonal relations, and reasoning. The students, who were either hearing or visually impaired, were enrolled in vocational classes at two residential secondary schools.…

The use of a programmed generalization strategy in general education classrooms was evaluated with 29 middle school students. Results indicated that the intervention, i.e., social skills training and self-monitoring with teacher matching, led to generalization of improved student behavior in up to six different class settings. (Author/CR)

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.…

Due to globalization in recent years, organizations and the government in Taiwan take developing human expertise more seriously than ever before. However, human resource development evaluation practices in Taiwan have somewhat overlooked connecting training to transfer and organizational results. To help close the gap, organizations in Taiwan need…

Speaker immersion is a tactic that uses multiple establishing operations to increase speaker behavior for individuals with limited mand and tact repertoires. The purpose of this paper was to evaluate the effects of speaker immersion on the number of independent mands, tacts, and autoclitics emitted by young children with verbal delays. In the…

In a permanently changing environment, it is by no means an easy task to distinguish potentially important events from negligible ones. Yet, to survive, every animal has to continuously face that challenge. How does the brain accomplish this feat? Building on previous work in "Drosophila melanogaster" visual learning, we have developed an…

The advantages and disadvantages of wider or narrower definitions of "pidginization" and "pidgin" are reviewed to determine the differences between pidgins and naturalistically learned second languages (L2s). It is argued that a wider definition is preferred because it avoids problematic counterexamples and captures…

The purpose of this study was to examine effectiveness of simultaneous prompting in teaching pointing to numerals to individuals with autism. Three individuals with autism were taught pointing to numerals, which were orally named by the teacher using simultaneous prompting. A multiple probe design was used across three behaviors and replicated…

Four preschool supervisors were individually trained in a collaborative team approach in which classroom and resource teachers together developed a plan to increase the peer interactions of the entire class, including children with disabilities. The purpose of the research was to assess the generalization of effects to a new program target…