Communicative spontaneity is reported to present a signi cant problem for individuals with high support needs. Examination of literature addressing communicative spontaneity reveals conceptually opposing views of the phenomenon. Both the binary and the continuum conceptualisations are examined in this paper in speci c relation to their logical consistency, explanatory power and limitations. It is argued that the continuum conceptualisation offers much greater explanatory power and facilitates understanding of communicative spontaneity. Several approaches to the operationalisation of the continuum approach are considered and contrasted. Limitations and problems with existing approaches to the operationalisation of spontaneity are explored and an alternative proposed.

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Developments arising from recent theory-directed attempts to understand learning are exposing weaknesses in the monopoly position attained by the operant model in special education. These new developments attest to the importance, the primacy and the functional significance of learning to use and to relate events (stimuli) in the environment. They also highlight the way in which the operant model excludes important learning details from consideration, not because they are intrinsically unmeasurable, but because measurable manifestations of them are not available at the time learning is taking place. Instructional technology, when updated to take into account these new developments, should be able to provide more reliable and more successful acquision, more precision in task analyses and, especially, more success in complex, longitudinal learning domains. Developing new technologies to supplement the successful operant ones should enable us to set higher expectations for success with, for example, intellectually disabled people in those domains in which they traditionally fail.

A demonstration study is described in which self-recording was implemented with an upper primary class of ten children with learning difficulties. Following a baseline period, an alternating conditions design was employed which demonstrated a mean rise in on-task behaviour of 10% as a result of the self-recording intervention employed.