Teaching toothbrushing behavior in severely retarded adults: systematic reduction of feedback and duration training

Eight severely retarded adults were trained to brush their teeth. Component behaviours were trained in a predetermined sequence of 15 steps. Training included scheduled opportunities for independence performance, instruction, modelling and partial and total physical guidance. Four types of feedback were used, i.e., verbal praise plus explicit head nodding, explicit nodding, inconspicous nodding and no feedback. Stepwise reduction of feedback was made contingent on a subject's repeated performance of each individual step. Five of the eight subjects learned to perform all 15 steps for three consecutive sessions. A different procedure for fading out feedback was used for the other three subjects, two of which learned to perform 14 steps reliably. Acquisition training was followed by procedures to establish persistance of criterion performances for an interval of eight days. Training procedures were based on interval shaping. All seven subjects learned to demonstrate the 14 or 15 component behaviours after an interval of eight to 17 days in which no systematic training occured.