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…

A course on military tactics was programed to provide four types of student response conditions: reading the item and writing the answer (overt, constructed), reading the item and thinking the answer (covert, constructed), reading the item with the answer included and then writing the answer (overt, prompted), and reading the item with the answer…

Three preservice teachers of students with severe disabilities were trained on systematic instruction skills, focusing on appropriate use of positive consequences and instructional prompts. Results indicated that immediate feedback was more effective with two student teachers and delayed feedback was more effective for the third. Teaching skills…

Children with high-functioning autism spectrum disorders (ASD) typically exhibit a lack of social reciprocity skills. They often struggle to maintain conversations, especially with topics of little or no interest to them, and to create meaningful relationships. By giving compliments to others, children with ASD have a means by which to show…

This article presents a study on how to improve the quality of Year 1 children's mathematical talk. Using a dictaphone, the children were recorded as they worked with their partner. Later, the children's responses were marked against a checklist of three types of talk: (1) disputational; (2) cumulative; and (3) exploratory. Throughout the study…

This final report of the Group Errorless Teaching Strategies Research Project is organized by the project objectives and covers planned and actual activities and outcomes. Objective 1 involved a review of the literature related to teaching students with mild and moderate mental handicaps in group settings and resulted in three articles which…

The effects of prompting and confirmation on automated presentation of materials in discrimination learning were studied. Eight pairs of words or pictures were presented to 48 mentally retarded subjects (mean IQ 63, mean chronological age 163.4 months, mean mental age 103.3 months). Each subject's correct responses advanced the program and, in the…

An undertaking designed to teach the fundamental concepts of programing makes the learner learn frame writing by means of frames. A sliding card gradually discloses the two basic sequences which programs usually follow--the linear and the branching sequences. A branching sequence may be normal or remedial, a frame regular or mainstream. A linear…

The paper discusses: features of word processors and their impact on the writing process and the social context for writing; research on word processors in schools and the potential instructional role of extensions to word processors, such as spelling and style checkers, synthesized speech output, computer networks, and interactive prompting…

Compares two instructional strategies, prompting and direct instruction, to determine which produces dialogical reasoning in written essays concerning controversial issues. Participants were 45 sixth graders. Finds both strategies equally productive and concludes that the emphasis should be on providing thought-provoking, issues-oriented social…