Many students with autism spectrum disorders show good decoding combined with poor comprehension. Twenty adolescent students with autism spectrum disorders participated in a study concerning the effects of three kinds of facilitation on reading comprehension. In a within-subjects design, each students read passages under four conditions: answering…

During prebaseline observations, three students diagnosed with autism were unable to make social initiations to another individual. The ability to make initiations would be considered a "pivotal response" in that it would allow an individual to come into contact with a wide variety of social reinforcement. A multiple-baseline design was…

Automobile crashes are the leading cause of death for those aged 3 to 33, with 43,005 (118 per day) Americans killed in 2002 alone. Seat belt use reduces the risk of serious injury in an accident, and refraining from using a cell phone while driving reduces the risk of an accident. Cell phone use while driving increases accident rates, and leads…

We describe a training program to teach applied behavior analysis (ABA) knowledge competencies to paraprofessional staff (N = 47) at a habilitation services agency for adults with developmental disabilities. Before and following training, staff completed assessment of knowledge tests for three content areas: basic learning principles,…

This study examined the effects of Dolphin-Assisted Therapy (DAT) as a reinforcer for verbal operant production in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder. Three children who attended a dolphin therapy program participated in this single subject research study. Baseline data was collected for each child via a video tape provided by parents and…

This paper summarizes the results of a review of the empirical literature (1990-2005) focusing on use of assistive technology as a self-management tool for persons with intellectual disabilities. Forty investigations were identified which provided information on assistive technology to assist persons with disabilities to initiate and complete…

One hundred forty-four subjects received 4 Brown-Peterson trials with recall triads from a common encoding category. Items on three trials were from a common subset, while on the fourth, the subset was shifted or not, and a cue was presented or not. The cue influenced response generation, a shift improved recall. (CHK)

A total of 36 5- and 8-year-old children were tested on cued and noncued recall of a list of 16 words containing either two, four or eight categories. Reported are numbers of words and categories recalled in cued and noncued situations, cluster grouping, age differences and interaction effects. (SDH)

The effects of prompting by peers on the rate of completing assignments and on the correspondence of noon-time plans with the amount of actual studying exhibited the same evening was observed with 15 undergraduate university students. Subjects were provisionally accepted students enrolled in a one credit pass/fail course. Students initially earned…

The present state of research in the area of automated teaching and the application of automated teaching devices were reviewed in terms of issues relating to programing, to machine variables, and to studies comparing conventional instruction with automated instruction. Some basic issues were singled out for consideration. Such problems as…

Describes a method of vocabulary prompting where the initial letter of each word in a phrase serves as a cue. Vocabulary recall is often difficult, but if the instructor uses whole words or phrases for cuing this leads to loss of creative effort from students. Letter cuing is a compromise between no help and too much help. (TL)

Examines self-control interventions considered effective in improving the performance of mentally retarded persons in acquiring, maintaining, and generalizing learned tasks. Studies employing self-monitoring, self-reinforcement, and antecedent cue regulation (self-instruction and picture cues) are cited. Picture cues are recommended as the most…

Data were generally consistent with the view that preschoolers and elementary schoolers can respond to memory probes by applying arithmetical processing to running gist from recently solved problems. Discussed are two competing interpretations of the development of working memory: fuzzy-trace theory and the generic-resources hypothesis. (Author/RH)

Three severely retarded adult males were taught to use a side-of-the-foot soccer pass, using a nine-step stimulus-response chain. Intensive physical prompts were provided initially, then systematically faded. The three trainers achieved the no-prompt criterion after 24, 29, and 22 sessions, respectively. (Author/JW)

The main purpose of this study was to look at how we used specific writing assignments in our courses to encourage metacognitive reflection in order to increase the learning that takes place. The study also aimed to aid in the development of higher order processing skills through the development of student reflection. The students involved in the…