Evaluation of a method for teaching dressing skills to profoundly mentally retarded persons

The present study was a systematic replication of Azrin, Schaeffer, and Wesolowski's (1976) method for teaching dressing skills to mentally retarded persons. Of the 3 profoundly retarded adults trained in this study, 2 attained criterion for independent undressing. No residents reached criterion on dressing despite as much as 108.2 hours of training. These results contrasted with those of Azrin et al. (1976), whose subjects reached criterion on all skills in an average of 12 hours. We also found that treatment gains were generally maintained through 3 months of follow-up. We concluded that although the program improved the clients' self-care skills, more research is needed to identify critical program and subject variables that may have accounted for the contrasting results between this study and the earlier work.