Incidental teaching for training communication in individuals with traumatic brain injury

Although significant gains in acquisition of a variety of skills following traumatic brain injury have been demonstrated, generalization of acquired skills presents a formidable challenge. Incidental teaching procedures refer to a sequence of interactions between a trainer and a learner which take advantage of teaching opportunities that arise naturally in unstructured situations and appear to be particularly applicable to communication deficits common to persons with traumatic brain injury. This paper presents an overview of incidental teaching procedures and a case study in which incidental teaching procedures were utilized in a multiple-baseline fashion across three sequential environments to increase complete requesting skills. Results show that complete requesting increased to nearly 100% of the trials in each new environment upon procedural implementation, compared to extremely low baseline levels. In addition, significant increases in independently initiated, rather than cued, requests occurred within the first few treatment sessions. Implications of incidental teaching procedures and case study results are discussed with suggestions for future research.