Six case studies investigated the outcomes of inclusive education on six children with mild mental retardation. In five cases, teachers had attempted to modify their programs to provide individualized instruction for high-risk children. All six children made very poor academic progress and five were poorly accepted socially by their classmates.…

The frequency of occurrence of targeted environmental events during both unstructured and structured descriptive analyses conducted with two children with severe mental retardation was compared. Results showed that procedural modifications employed during the structured descriptive analysis increased the frequency of occurrence for most targeted…

Twenty children (ages 4-8) with Down syndrome and their caregivers were compared to 20 typical children (ages 2-4) and their caregivers. Children with Down syndrome showed greater positive affect, social orientation, and task outcome behaviors reflective of pride. Caregivers of children with Down syndrome provided a greater frequency of praise.…

Three employees with moderate mental retardation who were nonreaders were taught to use sight words to self-initiate job tasks in competitive employment settings. Training resulted in the ability to read job-specific sight words, to use verbalized self-instruction, to use a self-monitoring checklist, to self-initiate work tasks, and increased…

A study evaluated the use of computer-based video anchors to increase photograph recognition by two students with severe intellectual disabilities. A substantial increase was made in the number of photographs correctly selected with the computer program with results generalizing to selection of photographs on each participant's augmentative…

A study evaluated the performance of 12 individuals with mental retardation on a post-perceptual discourse comprehension task. Three text-to-speech systems (DECTalk, MacinTalk, and Real Voice) were used to present stimulus passages. The DECTalk synthetic voice showed a non-significant trend toward superior accuracy scores on the comprehension…

An expert panel and consensus workshops identified eight general hallmarks and 23 related indicators of person-centered approaches in planning and providing services and supports to individuals with mental retardation. The applicability of person-centered features and indicators to improving services and supports is discussed. (Contains…

A social skills problem-solving intervention was used to teach social leisure skills to four adults with moderate levels of mental retardation. The intervention produced immediate positive changes in targeted social skills with all participants. They also generalized the use of the social skills to other settings. (Contains references.) (Author/CR)

A study compared qualitative aspects of social problem-solving skills of 79 persons with developmental disabilities and 104 typical adults. Individuals with developmental disabilities found employment-related social problems were difficult to solve effectively followed by social skills in the community and in an independent living situation.…

After participating in 6 to 10 sex education sessions, six adolescent and adult men with mild mental retardation showed minimal increases in their knowledge of friendship, contraception, pregnancy, sexual interaction, and social skills. Following sex education, negative feelings developed about marriage, having children, and being present during…

Data collected in 1987 (n=315) and in 1998 (n=144) found a positive shift in high school students' attitudes toward individuals with mental retardation with strong indication that inclusion had been a factor. Females decreased their derogatory beliefs while males increased in positive attitudes toward integration issues. (Contains references.)…

Two high school students with severe disabilities were taught to perform job tasks using a two-step process: touching a picture to prompt initiation of a task and turning a picture in a booklet to indicate task completion. As participants acquired the picture prompt strategy, their independent task initiations increased. (Contains references.)…

Ten adults with moderate and severe mental retardation were taught to construct shipping boxes using a dyadic instructional format in which each member of the dyad received instruction on one half of the task analysis on an alternative basis. Four of the five dyads learned to construct shipping boxes. (Contains references.) (Author/CR)

Effect of a 4 s constant time delay procedure on motor skill completion durations was examined. Participants were four adolescents with severe mental retardation. Results indicated that data patterns between adjacent baseline and intervention phases were visually different and statistically significant in the direction of less time. (Contains…

Individualized activity schedules were successfully used with a 4- year-old child with autism who attended an integrated public pre-school classroom. Graduated physical guidance and a system of most-to-least prompts were used during skill acquisition stages with teacher proximity and level of prompts being eventually faded. (Contains nine…