Assistive technologies (ATs) aimed at improving the life quality of persons with Autism Spectrum Disorder and/or Intellectual Disability (ASD/ID) is an important research area. Few have examined how this population use and experience AT or their vision for future uses of AT. The present study aimed to update and extend previous research and provides insight from caregivers, and other stakeholders (n=96), living in Ireland and the United Kingdom, on their experiences of assistive technology (AT) for ASD/ID. Caregiver and professional responses to an anonymous online survey showed that focus-individuals were rated low in terms of independent and self-management skills, with scheduling and planning and communication identified as desirable future AT functions. Overall, positive experiences of AT were reported, with AT use more than doubling in recent years.
Many prompting procedures exist for teaching skills to individuals with autism spectrum disorder and intellectual disability; however, direct comparisons between variations of prompt delay are rarely made. Here, we compared three variations of prompt delay (2-s or 5-s constant delay and 5-s progressive delay) alongside trial-and-error instruction. Four learners were taught a conditional discrimination task using a match-to-sample arrangement. Performances were compared using effectiveness and efficiency measures in an adapted alternating treatments design. A procedural modification, in the form of differential reinforcement, was applied to the prompt delay procedure for two of the four participants. With or without this procedural modification, results suggest progressive prompt delay may be effective and the most efficient in reducing learner errors during instruction.
Variations in prompt delay procedures are used in discrete-trial training to reduce the occurrence of errors before task mastery. However, the variations are seldom compared systematically. Using an adapted alternating treatments design, the present study compared progressive prompt delay with 2-s or 5-s constant prompt delay, on the acquisition of an expressive labeling task in four participants with autism spectrum disorder and intellectual disability. While all three prompt delay methods led to mastery of the tasks, albeit only when the tasks were simplified for one participant, progressive prompt delay generally proved the most efficient method on several measures, including lower error rates. This is consistent with the nature of the progressive prompt delay procedure which allows less time for errors to occur early in training. It is provisionally concluded that selection of progressive prompt delay is supported as a wise first choice option for clinicians, as a history of high error rates may impair later learning.
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