"The first of a 2-part article reviewing research into early reading and suggesting techniques of prompting." (Editor)

The investigation sought to teach a sequence of arrival behaviors to a severely mentally retarded 12-year-old child living in an institution. Withdrawal and reintroduction of the pacing prompts established that increases in independent arrival behavior were attributed to the pacing prompts. (Author/SB)

In a classroom setting, as distinct from other settings, a teacher asks questions in order to evaluate the correctness of the reply, not to seek information. (JD)

Four students (ages 10-14) with moderate mental retardation learned chained tasks with constant time delay and with the system of least prompts. Both strategies produced criterion-level performance; however, constant time delay was more efficient than least prompts in terms of number of sessions, percent of errors, and direct instructional time to…

Two experiments examined factors of recall in one- to two-year olds. Results suggest that the strength of organization of an event representation, rather than retention interval, is a major factor in long-term recall between one and two years old. (ETB)

Children of 8 and 11 years and college students were tested for reorientation of visual attention to a target following a cue. The first, but not the second, experiment showed an interaction between distance of target from fixation and stimulus onset asynchrony. The second experiment suggested children can orient attention through valid, neutral,…

Three autistic children (ages 9-11) received spontaneous communication training using a time delay, modeling, and food reinforcement procedure. Results showed gains in 2 spontaneous responses ("please" and "thank you") and 1 verbally prompted response ("you're welcome"). Gains were validated socially with 10 adults. (Author/JDD)

Children and adults listened to stories containing an early goal sentence and a later inconsistent outcome. Later object inferences varied with context sentence and title for all ages. Results established that the effects involved maintenance of concept accessibility and that early concept prominence was critical. (BC)

Investigates the way that young children make aesthetic judgments about art works made by peers. Indicates that there are three phases in response formation: an initial response, a judgment based on more formal criteria, and an emotional response. Notes that children often needed prompting questions to reach the latter phases. (DSK)

Two young adults with severe intellectual disabilities received either frequent or infrequent verbal prompts through a small earphone and pocket radio- and computer-controlled device as they completed daily living tasks. Data indicated that the frequent prompts condition fostered a higher level of on-task behavior and correct task responding.…

This study examined the effectiveness of a simultaneous prompting teaching procedure to teach different tasks simultaneously to each of four high school students with functioning levels from typically developing to moderate disabilities. Results support the procedure's effectiveness and all students met criterion on each set after the simultaneous…

Recent data (T. J. Perfect, C. J. A. Moulin, M. A. Conway, & E. Perry, 2002) have suggested that retrieval-induced forgetting (RIF) depends on conceptual memory because the effect is not found in perceptually driven tasks. In 3 experiments, the authors aimed to show that the presence of RIF depends on whether the procedure induces appropriate…

This study addressed two questions related to the writing of second graders ("n"=195). The first examined the effects of writing prompts on the compositional fluency of second-grade students. The second considered whether these effects are different based on spelling achievement and handwriting fluency. Students wrote six narratives in response to…

Effectiveness of a simultaneous prompting procedure was evaluated for students with mental retardation at different levels of schools (preschool, primary and secondary grades) using various discrete tasks. Participants included three students whose functioning levels ranged from typically developing to mild and moderate mental disabilities.…

In an effort to assess student writing in a way that reflects current views of writing (i.e., as a social process supported by the interaction of a number of cognitive sub-processes), and yet still seeks to determine what students can do independently, it has become a common practice to include timed essays in student portfolios. However, this…