Teaching Job Independence and Flexibility to Mentally Retarded Students Through the Use of a Self‐control Package

Abstract

We examined mentally retarded individuals' use of picture cues and self-monitoring to initiate a series of tasks of varying type and order. Four severely to moderately retarded high school students participating in a vocational training program were trained to use a picture-cue system. The system consisted of photographs of vocational tasks that were inserted in the assigned order in a photoalbum sheet; self-management was accomplished by marking off each photo after its corresponding task was completed. Students were assigned seven tasks from a pool of 13 each day. Results indicated that the students quickly learned to use the picture-cue system to change tasks throughout their workday without trainer prompts and that performance was maintained as trainer feedback and presence were decreased. At the end of the study, two students who were exposed to novel photographs were able to initiate independently after only minimal training, suggesting that the use of the picture-cue system had become a generalized skill.

Effects of a photo activity schedule book on independent task changes by students with intellectual disabilities in community and school job sites

“…This study adds to the extant research base on using PASB to improve vocational performance (Connis 1979;Copeland and Hughes 2000;Martin, Elias-Burger and Mithaug 1987;Sowers et al 1985) and provides further evidence to support the use of visual schedules to increase student independence. Teachers can translate these procedures into classroom and community practice by integrating schedules into daily classroom routines.…”

“…Researchers have set a precedent for the use of photo activity schedules to support students with autism (Bryan and Gast 2000;Copeland and Hughes 2000;Krantz, MacDuff and McClanahan 1993;Krantz and McClanahan 1998;MacDuff, Krantz and McClanahan 1993;Massey and Wheeler 2000) and intellectual disabilities (Bevill et al 2001;Connis 1979;Martin, Elias-Burger and Mithaug 1987;Sowers et al 1985;Spriggs, Gast and Ayres 2007). Considering that completing tasks within an allotted time-frame and transitioning between activities without prompting can pose a problem for independent function for many individuals with intellectual disabilities, educators either need to identify a way to broadly improve these skills or provide students with adequate support systems so that these deficits do not inhibit their independence.…”

Teaching Daily Living Skills to Children With Autism in Unsupervised Settings Through Pictorial Self‐management

“…First, whereas the majority of prior research investigating the use of pictures to guide behavior for individuals with disabilities has focused on adolescents or adults (e.g., Frank, Wacker, Berg, & McMahon, 1985;Johnson & Cuvo, 1981;Krantz et al, 1993;MacDuff et al, 1993;Nietupski, Clancy, & Christiansen, 1984;Sowers, Verdi, Bourbeau, & Sheehan, 1985;Thinesen & Bryan, 1981;Wacker & Berg, 1983, the current investigation focused exdusively on children with 471 19942272471-481…”

Brief report: Teaching persons with moderate mental retardation to use printed instructions and time cues in a work context

“…The subjects were provided with prearranged pictorial cues of the tasks or of the tasks and their execution times (Connis, 1979;Martin, Ellis-Burger, & Mithaug, 1987;Sowers, Verdi, Bourbeau, & Sheehan, 1985). Self-recording could also be included.…”

“…Presenting the subjects with different sequences of pictorial cues (cf. Sowers et al, 1985) would solve the problem of task variability, yet it would also appear as a rather unsophisticated and time-consuming approach. The use of pictorial cues for indicating task times could easily prove ineffective if the subjects are not independently active in checking the time (cf.…”