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Developing generalized instruction-following behavior in severely retarded people
Monograph of the American Association of Mental Deficiency
|January 1, 1978
Summary
This study trained individuals with severe intellectual disabilities to follow verbal instructions using stimulus control. Modified training strategies helped most participants generalize skills to new commands.
Area of Science:
- Developmental Psychology
- Behavioral Analysis
- Special Education
Background:
- Individuals with severe and profound intellectual disabilities often face challenges in understanding and following verbal instructions.
- Effective communication and instruction-following are crucial for daily living and skill acquisition in this population.
- Previous research highlights the need for specialized training methods to address unique learning needs.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the effectiveness of a transfer of stimulus control procedure for teaching verb-noun instruction following.
- To develop and implement strategies for generalizing instruction-following skills to untrained verbal commands.
- To explore the impact of complex instructions involving adjectives on learning and identify necessary training modifications.
Main Methods:
- Employed a transfer of stimulus control procedure to train participants to respond to verb-noun instructions.
- Developed generalization strategies to facilitate performance with novel instructions.
- Introduced and modified training for complex instructions including color and size adjectives based on participant performance.
Main Results:
- Participants successfully learned to follow basic verb-noun instructions.
- Initial difficulties were observed with complex instructions involving adjectives, necessitating procedural modifications.
- Modified training approaches led to successful acquisition of complex instruction-following skills in most participants.
Conclusions:
- The transfer of stimulus control procedure is effective for teaching instruction following in individuals with severe intellectual disabilities.
- Generalization strategies are vital for enabling participants to respond to untrained instructions.
- Adaptable training modifications are critical for mastering complex conditional discriminations and have implications for expressive skill development.