Teaching self-help skills to autistic and mentally retarded children

Three autistic, mentally retarded children, ranging in age from 4 to 11 years, and a six-year-old mentally retarded girl, were taught various adaptive behaviors using a multiple baseline design. Skills taught were shoe typing, toothbrushing, hair combing, putting on pants, shirt, and socks, and eating and drinking. Training included modeling, verbal instructions, prompting, and edible and social reinforcement. Treatment procedures involved the whole-task method of teaching self-help skills and consisted of three phases: (a) the trainer modeled and verbally described the target behavior; (b) the trainer physically and verbally guided the child through the entire sequence of task-analyzed steps; and, (c) the child was instructed to perform the behavior independently. The results of this study and their implications for future research are discussed.