Prompting and Stimulus Shaping Procedures for Teaching Visual‐motor Skills to Retarded Children

Abstract

Stimulus shaping appears to be a highly successful way to teach discrimination skills. In stimulus shaping, the topographical configuration of the stimuli is gradually changed over trials so that discrimination is at first easy, and then gradually more difficult. Stimulus shaping procedures might also be effective for training visual-motor tasks. Two experiments were conducted to assess the relative effectiveness of stimulus shaping and "traditional" prompting procedures. Pegboard skills were trained in Experiment 1. In Experiment 2 a self-care skill was trained, in which children learned to hang a toothbrush or a washdoth on a specific hook. Six low-functioning retarded children were studied in each experiment, using a within-subject alternating treatments design. Each participant received concurrent training on two related tasks, using stimulus shaping for one and a standard prompting procedure for the other. Training with the stimulus shaping procedure required less training time to criterion, always resulted in fewer errors, always required fewer and less intrusive therapist's prompts, and always resulted in greater density of reinforcement. These results demonstrate the value of stimulus shaping strategies for training visual-motor skills.

Effective use of pictures as extra stimulus prompts

“…Perhaps this blocking effect is so strong that techniques such as fading are not powerful enough to overcome the problem. Perhaps fading procedures are indeed unable to completely or efficiently divert the children's attention to the critical elements (Walsh & Lamberts, 1979;Mosk & Bucher, 1984). In fact, literature on compound learning with animal subjects has indicated that, given a previously established association between a stimulus and a response, an added element cannot fully divert attention on to itself and thus response acquisition to the added element will be impaired to some degree (Kehoe, 1987).…”

An Examination of Two Prompt Fading Procedures and Opportunities to Observe in Teaching Handicapped Preschoolers Self-Help Skills

“…For example, procedures involving systematic shaping or fading of stimulus characteristics have allowed more complex discriminations to be taught to persons with mental retardation (e.g., Mosk & Bucher, 1984). Likewise, well-documented procedures for prompting responses, then fading prompts as student performance improves, have demonstrated efficacy in the instruction of such self-help skills as toothbrushing (Horner & Keilitz, 1975), dressing (Azrin, Schaeffer, & Wesolowki, 1976), toileting (Foxx & Azrin, 1973), and eating (Azrin & Armstrong, 1973).…”

Evaluation of the Effectiveness and Efficiency of Two Stimulus Prompt Strategies With Severely Handicapped Students

“…These results extend previous findings on prompting strategies by focusing on the acquisition of complex behaviors by severely handicapped learners. Although various authors have compared the effectiveness of prompting strategies with discrete behaviors (e.g., Mosk & Bucher, 1984), our study compared two instructional prompt strategies with complex behavior that were both functional and age appropriate.…”