Establishing the manding function of communicative gestures with individuals with severe/profound mental retardation

Procedures for teaching communicative gestures to individuals with mental retardation are focused mostly on establishing requesting or manding. It is often taken for granted that when a student has been taught to make a request, that he or she is indeed manding. Five students with severe/profound mental retardation accepted referents, regardless of whether the referents matched the gestures they made. Apparently, their responding could not be defined as manding. A correction procedure, including interruption, physical guidance, verbal instruction, and repetition, was then applied and increased the individuals' correct rejecting of unmatching referents. Data were collected within a multiple baseline design across individuals. It is suggested that assessing student's response when the trainer or teacher delivers items that do not match the referent of a prior request is a necessary part of each training program.