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TEACHING NONVOCAL COMMUNICATION SKILLS TO MULTIHANDICAPPED RETARDED ADULTS 1
Author(s) -
Reid Dennis H.,
Hurlbut Bonnie
Publication year - 1977
Publication title -
journal of applied behavior analysis
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.1
H-Index - 76
eISSN - 1938-3703
pISSN - 0021-8855
DOI - 10.1901/jaba.1977.10-591
Subject(s) - praise , psychology , multiple baseline design , baseline (sea) , nonverbal communication , communication skills , medical education , audiology , developmental psychology , social psychology , medicine , oceanography , psychiatry , geology , intervention (counseling)
A training program for teaching communication skills to nonvocal retarded adults was evaluated in three experiments. The four subjects were severely disabled physically and had never demonstrated functional speech. Each person was taught to use either a prosthetic head pointer or to point with a hand in using a communication board for expressive language. Following baseline in Experiment I, coordination training was implemented, consisting of instructions, manual guidance, praise, feedback, and practice. Each person demonstrated a higher frequency of accurate pointing to designated areas on the board during coordination training than during baseline. In Experiment II, identification training, consisting of instructions, praise, feedback, and practice was introduced after baseline. Subjects pointed more frequently to specific word‐photograph combinations to correspond to descriptive verbal labels after introduction of identification training. Social validation measures in Experiment III indicated that the communication board skills were functional in providing a method of expressing a choice of a leisure activity to people who previously could not understand the subjects' communication attempts. The acquired skills maintained throughout a seven‐week followup period.