Supporting grocery shopping for students with intellectual disability:a preliminary study

Decades of research exist supporting various types of self-operating prompting systems, including picture, audio and video to help students with disabilities acquire skills, especially to teach life skills. While many facets of life skills are important to target for instruction for secondary students with intellectual disability, one receiving declining attention is grocery shopping.

Using a single subject alternating treatment design with two high school students with intellectual disability, the authors analysed the impact of three self-operating prompts systems - picture, audio and video - on students' successful selection of grocery items, independence in completing the task (i.e., percent of steps not prompted), and task completion time.

Results showed video prompting to be most successful prompting system for both students for selecting grocery items. However, independence and task completion time varied significantly for the students across the prompting systems.

It is important to match the correct prompting system to individual students' skills, needs and preference, but also to balance efficiency - both for educators and students. Implications for Rehabilitation Video prompting is an effective instructional strategy, but must be considered in light of time and skill to create the video prompts as well as social stigmatization of use in natural community settings. It is important to match the correct prompting system to each student, but also to balance efficiency - both for educators and students.