Effectiveness and Efficiency of Constant-Time Delay and Most-to-Least Prompt Procedures in Teaching Daily Living Skills to Children with Intellectual Disabilities
2012; EDAM-Education Consultancy Limited; Volume: 12; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
2148-7561
Autores Tópico(s)Cognitive and developmental aspects of mathematical skills
ResumoAbstract This study is aimed at comparing the effectiveness and efficiency of constant-time delay and most-to-least prompt procedures in teaching daily living skills to children with mental retardation. Adapted alternating treatment design was used. The outcome shows that both procedures were equally effective in teaching the daily living skills. However, the most-to-least prompt procedure is more efficient than a constant-time delay procedure in terms of total training time, number of trials and training errors. Both strategies are found to have similar effectiveness in maintenance and generalization for daily living skills. Key Words Constant-time Delay, Most-to-least Prompts, Skill Training, Daily Living Skills, Mental Retardation. When preparing a curriculum for children with intellectual disabilities, teachers must consider the applied method in terms of being both effective and efficient (Miller & Test, 1989; Snell, 1982). Efficiency in teaching can be defined both as an effective conclusion of teaching by a teaching method and as providing a skill without losing time, making errors and struggling less than with any other curriculum (Tekin-Iftar & Kircaali-Iftar, 2004). Therefore, if the effectiveness of prompt procedures used in teaching differs with regard to the teaching period required for gaining skills, then the number of teaching sessions, the number of errors made by the student, and the preserving and generalization of the skills gained is very important. Since the information on one procedure is more effective and efficient than another one, this allows for the possibility to achieve more tasks in less time for people working with children with intellectual disabilities (Hughes & Frederick, 2006; Snell, 1982; Zhang, Cote, Chen, & Liu, 2004). Thus, valuable teaching time is used more effectively. Response prompts, as a response to a certain stimulus, are ways of behavior offered by the teacher to their students for providing the correct response (Ozyurek, 1996; Wolery, Ault, & Doyle, 1992). The different response prompts used in teaching settings are physical help prompt, verbal prompt, sign prompt and modeling (Ozyurek, 1996; Varol, 1996). In teaching to use the constant-time delay, after giving the task direction of the skill, the constanttime delay is allowed to pass before the prompt is offered, with the aim that the student achieves the skill independently. The prompt procedure of time delay consists of two stages: (1) teaching procedure of zero second delay and (2) teaching procedure of 4-5 seconds delay. As the prompts given to the student to achieve the skill stages are removed in terms of time, no change is made in the form or amount of the prompt for removing the prompt. For example, there is no alternating from the physical help prompt to the verbal help prompt. Throughout the teaching sessions, teaching is done with the prompt determined for the student before teaching, and this procedure is carried on until the student achieves the skill stages independently within the limits of determined time without needing the prompt (Ault, Wolery, Doyle, & Gast, 1989; Gast, Ault, Wolery, Doyle, & Belanger, 1988; Schuster, Gast, Wolery, & Guiltinan, 1988; Schuster, Morse, Ault, Doyle, Crawford, & Wolery, 1988; Snell & Gast, 1981; Tekin-Iftar & Kircaali-Iftar, 2004; Varol, 2005; Wolery, Holcombe, Cybriwsky, Doyle, Schuster, & Ault, 1992). Teaching by most-to-least prompts, is designed as decreasing the prompt to its ultimate removal after beginning to teach with offering the prompt that gets the individual reacting correctly. Most-toleast prompts in teaching made by most-to-least prompts can be achieved in three ways: (a) merely exchanging the kind; (b) merely exchanging the amount; (c) exchanging each two of the prompts that will get the student to react correctly. By removing the prompt in terms of kind, the amount or both, the purpose is allowing the student to achieve independence (Ault et al. …
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