The study sought to determine if there are differences between shifts of workers in Intermediate Care Facilities in their ratings of the daily living skills of mentally retarded residents, and whether these differences reflect actual differences in performance by the residents. Staff were interviewed concerning the level of prompt required to…

A STUDY BY TABER AND GLASER WHICH TAUGHT SIGHT VOCABULARY BY THE VANISHING LITERAL PROMPTS METHOD WAS REPLICATED IN AN EXPERIMENT WITH 14 PRESCHOOL, KINDERGARTEN, AND BEGINNING FIRST-GRADE CHILDREN. MATERIALS USED WERE EIGHT LOWER CASE COLOR WORDS PRINTED ON 3 BY 5 CARDS. AFTER PRETESTS TO IDENTIFY COLOR KNOWLEDGE AND CONFIRM LACK OF WORD…

The desirability of and problems inherent in a core language course designed to teach the speaking and understanding skills of English on a completely automated or self-instructional basis are considered. Such courses could be developed for specific countries to instruct foreign students prior to their arrival for technical instruction here, or…

Social skills training and self-monitoring were used to remediate socially inappropriate behaviors of a man with Down Syndrome in a supported competitive employment setting. Social behaviors of the moderately mentally retarded man were improved and maintained over a 38-week period, as trainer support was systematically faded over time. (Author/JDD)

Four moderately mentally retarded students, aged 8-13, were taught to read food words found in grocery stores, using constant time delay or system of least prompts procedures. Both strategies produced criterion-level performance in training and other settings, but the constant time delay procedure was more efficient. (Author/JDD)

Four moderately to severely mentally retarded adolescents used a cassette player to self-administer auditory prompts in two of three task areas: vocational assembly, use of a washing machine, and food preparation. The procedure included acquisition, faded assistance, and maintenance phases. All four students learned and maintained performance of…

This study examined methods of providing language evaluation and remediation services to students with language impairments in the regular classroom in order to focus on authentic classroom-based language and discourse. Evaluation was through observation of routine social uses of dialogue between students and teachers. Remedial strategies involved…

This report discusses a study that examined the perceived credibility of children with learning disabilities once they received instruction in a procedure to increase recall during narrative testimony. Narrative Elaboration Training (NET) helps children to develop memory skills by teaching strategies for remembering the details that are expected…

Reports long-term effects of intensive instruction in the cue attendance or hypothesis generation on open-exploration behavior of 120 ninth graders. Five dependent measures included: number of observed details; number and quality of hypotheses; and number and diversity of questions. Results suggest long-term benefits. (Author/JN)

The relative effectiveness of 3 instructional procedures (sight word, fading, tactile-kinesthetic) in teaching 32 students (age 9-20) with moderate to severe mental retardation to read a series of monosyllabic words was investigated. No one experimental condition was superior to the others, and no skill acquisition differences were found in…

This methodology for teaching basic meal preparation skills to students with mental retardation uses convenience foods and involves learning meal preparation reading vocabulary and common procedures. Instructional techniques include sight word development, use of rebus symbols, and graduated prompts (verbal, modeling, or physical guidance). A list…

This study of interactions between three severely withdrawn, autistic preschool children and six nonhandicapped peers found that peers can be effectively taught strategies to increase appropriate social behaviors of autistic classmates, and a group-oriented reinforcement contingency is an effective complement to teacher-prompted interventions and…

This study, involving four staff members in an institution for people with mental retardation, found that a computerized system of prompts to improve staff-client interactions produced more positive statements, improved distribution of interaction among clients, and resulted in delivery of more positive reinforcement than a traditional…

The purpose of this research was to implement and evaluate a classroom strategy to increase student engagement in sustained silent reading (SSR), a form of school-based recreational reading. Teacher modeling was selected as the primary intervention. A within-subjects ABAB withdrawal design was used to evaluate the effectiveness of the…

The increasing availability and performance of computer-based testing has prompted more research on the automatic assessment of language and speaking proficiency. In this investigation, we evaluated the feasibility of using an off-the-shelf speech-recognition system for scoring speaking prompts from the LanguEdge field test of 2002. We first…