A behavioral treatment program was used to improve the functional skills of a 12-year-old anoxic child. Neuropsychological test results indicated marked amnesia and global cognitive deficits. Functionally, self-care tasks could be performed, but only with verbal and physical prompting. Introduction of a monetary reward system significantly reduced…

A study was aimed at developing a methodology for describing competent classroom teaching performance and analyzing components of competent classroom decision making to be used in improving preservice and inservice teacher training programs. Information processing research suggests that expertise in semantically rich domains involves the ability…

The effects of cognitive and behavioral orienting activities and practice on student learning of cued and uncued information were examined in this study. The subjects were 54 grade 9 students (28 males and 26 females), who were classified as high or low ability based on the verbal intelligence estimate of the Iowa Test of Basic Skills. These…

Effects of embedded (appropriately positioned within text) and intact (outline format) headings on the processing of ecological and geological text material were examined in two separate studies. Suggesting that outlines may provide readers with global information about a passage and that embedded headings may aid in discovering relationships…

This study examines children's understanding of temporal markers and explores a strategy for teaching such understanding when it is absent. The original sample for this study consisted of 22 first graders and 85 kindergarten children. All subjects were individually pretested with the Temporal Marker Test (TMT) which evaluates performance on eight…

Programed instruction applies what is known about learning to educational psychology. The success of programed learning is determined by the material used and by the construction of this material. In order to construct effective learning sequences, the behavioral end products of instruction must be specified clearly and precisely. The subject…

As participants in a "choice training" program, three moderately/severely handicapped adolescents were reinforced or prompted first to select a leisure activity and then to sustain the activity for gradually longer periods of time with decreasing teacher supervision. Results included sustained activity maintenance from one week to four months…

Students in Grades six, seven, and eight were asked to integrate existing information and initially unknown answers to prose-related questions for answering superordinate questions. Results suggest that grade level development of hypothetico-deductive skills interacts with instructional prompt levels and that these skills are essential to…

Play-skills training, provided to eight Zambian elementary children with intellectual disabilities, resulted in more substantial increases in interaction between subjects and nondisabled children when coupled with teacher prompts, compared to training alone. Having a nondisabled child take the initiator role increased and maintained social…

This study examined the use of a palmtop computer running a software program by transition-age students with cognitive disabilities to increase independence on vocational and independent living tasks. The purpose of this research was to test the hypotheses that a palmtop computer utilizing a Windows CE platform with touch screen capabilities and…

Discrete trial training (DTT) is a well-established intervention for teaching skills to children with autism; however, few published guidelines are available for determining whether a child's rate of learning a particular skill is satisfactory and, if not, what to do. We assert that progress within 8-10 teaching sessions usually is evidence of…

Four student interns were taught to use environmental arrangement strategies and delayed prompts to enhance the number of teaching occasions and to facilitate communicative requesting of students with severe language delays. A multiple-probe design across interns was implemented to evaluate the effects of the training on interns' use of the…

The viability of the Partial Credit Model (PCM) of G. N. Masters (1982) for scaling and banking individual essay prompts from a statewide writing assessment program was investigated. Preliminary analyses indicated the feasibility of using the PCM, the general polychotomous form of the Rasch model, with essay data from the Maryland Writing Test…

THE RELATIVE EFFECTIVENESS OF SIX MODES OF TRAINING TEACHERS TO USE PROBING QUESTIONS WAS INVESTIGATED. THE MODES INVOLVED SYMBOLIC MODELING, PERCEPTUAL MODELING, OR BOTH, COUPLED WITH FEEDBACK. AFTER RATINGS OF PERTINENT BEHAVIOR IN A 5-MINUTE LESSON WERE COLLECTED AS PRETRAINING MEASURES, STANFORD TEACHER INTERNS WERE RANDOMLY DISTRIBUTED AMONG…

The use of group approval as a social reinforcer and related methods in group presentation of programed instruction were investigated in a series of studies. The efficacy of programed instructional materials is frequently limited by their inability to command and maintain adequate attention and motivation. To consider social reinforcement effects…