Evaluation of a self-operated auditory prompting system with four adolescents with moderate or severe mental handicaps found the students could successfully use the system in learning a task in one setting and could generalize use of the prompting system to the same task in another setting and to a somewhat different task in the original setting.…

A 10-year-old autistic child was trained to imitate verbal prompts describing the child's motor responses. When intervention was introduced in the form of a gradual delay in the presentation of the verbal prompts, the child's spontaneous speech on trained items increased. Generalization and maintenance were analyzed. (Author/JDD)

The use of a self-operated auditory prompting system by a 12-year-old student with autism and moderate mental retardation to decrease inappropriate and off-task behavior was examined. Results indicated a significant decrease in the number of teacher-delivered prompts required by the student to engage in appropriate behaviors and remain on task.…

A study found simultaneous prompting procedures were effective in teaching environmental word identification to five students (ages 6-11) with moderate intellectual disabilities and that they were able to acquire additional instructive feedback stimuli presented on either a continuous or an intermittent presentation schedule, regardless of…

Investigates the extent to which the use of a prompting statement can increase reports of pretreatment change. Results reveal that hearing a prompting statement did not increase the amount of pretreatment change for participants in the experimental condition. Those participants who did not hear the prompting statement reported greater pretreatment…

Three adults with severe disabilities received instructional support to make purchases in fast food restaurants. During intervention, participants were prompted to make five distinct choices during the community routine. This prompting resulted not only in increased choice making, but also in collateral increases in the performance of the…

In three experiments, students received a short science lesson on how airplanes achieve lift and then were asked to write an explanation (retention test) and solutions to five problems (transfer test). For some students, the lesson contained signals such as section headings and pointer words. Students given signals generated significantly more…

Educational interventions based on the principles of behavior analysis are highly effective for establishing skills in young children with autism. As a first step in program development, the child's current skill level is determined by evaluating performance on tasks drawn from a preestablished curriculum. However, few specific guidelines have…

The purpose of the present study was to examine the effectiveness of most to least prompting on teaching pedestrian skills to individuals with developmental disabilities. Five individuals with developmental disabilities were taught three different pedestrian skills, all related to crossing the streets, using simulation activities on a road model…

Contextual cuing refers to the facilitation of performance in visual search due to the repetition of the same displays. Whereas previous studies have focused on contextual cuing within single-search trials, this study tested whether 1 trial facilitates visual search of the next trial. Participants searched for a T among Ls. In the training phase,…

Group time discussions help children make their own choices about the activities and centers they would like to visit throughout the day. It is easy when visual reminders are used. Children can make choices about learning centers, receive center tags or "play passes," and be inspired to try new activities. The only thing needed is a system. This…

The authors examined the effect of sound-to-spelling regularity on written spelling latencies and writing durations in a dictation task in which participants had to write each target word 3 times in succession. The authors found that irregular words (i.e., those containing low-probability phoneme-to-grapheme mappings) were slower both to…

This document presents the proceedings of 16th Annual Research Forum held June 15, 2011, at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Included herein are the following 25 action research papers: (1) The Effects of Prompted Math Journaling on Algebra 1 Students' Achievement and Attitudes (Heidi I. Arnold); (2) Group Work and Attitude…

This report describes the development of grade norms for timed-writing performance in two modes of writing: persuasive and descriptive. These norms are based on objective and automatically computed measures of writing quality in grammar, usage, mechanics, style, vocabulary, organization, and development. These measures are also used in the…

Studying worked examples and engaging in self-explanation are well supported strategies for developing self-regulated learning and improving student performance. Our efforts involve a design theory approach to creating a Web-based learning tool that uses the notion of a weekly quiz to draw students into an environment that supports the development…