Research part of a Senior Honors Thesis submitted to Kent State University by Patricia Sorce, who was a National Science Foundation Undergraduate Research Participant while conducting this research. (VM)

A report is given of a study on how young children develop social skills in situations where rules are adapted to the flow of conversation. (JD)

The article reports the findings of two studies involving comprehension and retention in learning disabled (N=96) and normally achieving (N=64) second and sixth graders. Results were interpreted to support J. Torgesen's conceptualization of learning disabled children as inactive learners. (Author/SBH)

A study examined the impact of a peer-mediated intervention consisting of songs and finger plays, attention to photographs of desired behavior, and peer verbal cues, on two preschoolers with developmental delays. The intervention resulted in increases in engaged and on-task behavior, interactive play, and appropriate participation in circle/story…

Effects of type of prompt on the use of external strategies were examined with 272 children (ages 7-17) with or without mental retardation. A task requiring memory for object placement was performed under one of four conditions: no prompt, verbal prompt, physical prompt, verbal and physical prompt. Results suggested that strategy use by older…

This study assessed effectiveness of peer delivered simultaneous prompting (SP) in teaching the expressive identification of community signs to four students with developmental disabilities. Results showed that the tutors delivered the SP reliably and tutees were able to expressively identify community signs. Tutees maintained acquired skills one…

A study compared a 4 s constant time delay and a simultaneous prompting procedure on teaching receptively identifying animals to three children (ages 7-10) with mild/moderate mental retardation. Both procedures were effectively implemented by sibling tutors, simultaneous prompting was more efficient, and constant time delay resulted in more…

A study involving three preschoolers with developmental disabilities examined whether or not the use of a simultaneous prompting procedure would result in an increase on the percentage of correct responding of receptively identifying occupations from picture cards. Results found simultaneous prompting was effective. Maintenance and generalization…

Two methods of prompting were compared for their relative effectiveness in teaching a group of autistic students, age 12-20, to discriminate line drawings used in picture communication books. Students required fewer trials to criterion and made significantly fewer errors in the delayed-prompting technique compared to the fading-of-prompts design.…

Five adults with severe handicaps were taught leisure skills using two instructional prompt-fading procedures. Increasing assistance and graduated guidance were found to be equivalent in instructional time to criterion. Increasing assistance required fewer trials to criterion, but resulted in a larger percentage of errors to criterion than…

Four preschool children with autism played "Follow-the-Leader," in which a normal peer demonstrated and physically prompted a variety of actions and object manipulations that defined the activity. Following training, all four subjects generalized their imitative skill to a new setting involving new actions and object manipulations. (Author/JDD)

Six persons, ages 17-20, with moderate mental retardation were taught to identify 3 words by each of 2 different procedures--a fading procedure called the Task Demonstration Model and the Standard Prompting Hierarchy. The Task Demonstration Model produced fewer errors in acquisition, generalization, and maintenance. (Author/JDD)

A cognitive, nonintrusive method of controlling head-rocking behavior in an 11-year-old blind subject involved having the boy place his hand on his cheek or chin when prompted that he was rocking his head. The subject demonstrated significant decreases in head rocking during intervention and generalization during followup. (Author/JDD)

Students (grades 7-8) with and without learning disabilities (LD) wrote stories for which a beginning, middle, end, or no prompt was given. Results indicated differences between groups in quantity and quality of story production. LD subjects scored significantly lower when offered the middle prompt than other prompts, perhaps because of their…

This study evaluated the effectiveness of the constant time delay procedure, while comparing the efficiency of using teacher-selected and student-selected material prompts, in teaching multiplication facts to 4 male students with learning disabilities (ages 9 to 13). Results indicated that the time delay procedure was most efficient when students…